Notes on geese

I thought it stacking the bowl, from the dishwasher, next to the other bowls. That it’s funny he gave me these bowls, that first July after. I like the bowls. I’ll keep them, the first nice ceramics I’ve owned, and, even though I hardly have reason to use them because mostly I’m uninterested in that kind of breakfast now, I like that they are mine. But, I was thinking when i was putting them away how odd it is that he gave me them the first summer after. I don’t know how kind it was. To say; I’ve finished with you now and I’d like to grant you permission to have breakfast with someone else. Crying, outside in the cafe over brunch I’d thought, how spectacular that we are already here, giving blessing for the next bit. How evolved that you found two expensive bowls and imagined my future inside them. But now it’s like, you always knew you wouldn’t stay forever. I always knew you wouldn’t stay forever. But you kept me until the charm of my being in your house wore off.

Something like that. So now I hardly use those bowls, my housemates do I imagine because I’m always taking them clean out of the dishwasher. Someone in the first floor opposite me shuts their window because the rain has really started now. I said I’d go for a walk and I still will because I think I have to know something, something other than the feeling I woke up with today. I haven’t been able to cry for a while and I’ve always thought myself a cryer. Before bed last night I calmed myself down by replaying old voice notes I have remembered to be soothing because of the way it was late and they were talking quietly into the phone. Because of the way she ate a biscuit and kept talking and my nerves tingle when someone talks quietly and crunches a ginger biscuit. Because I don’t mind what you’re saying but I find it calms me down to imagine you doing the small things that a life does. How do you put on your make-up, and are you one of the people who fills the sink with hot water and bubbles before they even start washing up. I like that.

It’s probably in part about the way I have been seeing myself the whole time. Yours until you say I’m not. And then I’ve been living like that for a while and missing things. And I’ve been living like that for a while and expecting something that isn’t here. What if, as I knew I was never staying forever, as he knew, what if I loved it for as long as I loved it and then found my own time to go. What if I didn’t spend that weekend that January on my knees and wailing and silent and alone taking my books from the shelves. What if when I left the last time, and it came around so suddenly, because the uber was downstairs, and it was the last time I was going to lock the door. What if I could actually feel that it was the last time. It is never enough time to leave for the last time though, so in the end it’s like every other time I’d gone downstairs to get in an Uber, slightly behind myself, surely forgetting something. It is never enough time to leave for the last time. But there, I did, just with more bags. And, I kept my key till I’d see you the next time but I needn’t have kept my key, I never used it again. But I did. It was just incase. How will I get into my house if I don’t have a key?

Anyway, the bowls, they weren’t bad, I think they were just guilt for never having explicitly definitely said; you know this isn’t leading to our child. This isn’t where this is ever going to go. Well I know, I knew, but you implied sometimes, so, well, I probably would have stayed forever. Even though we stopped being able to breathe. Still we laughed, I think there was always that and still is now in a Chinese restaurant near where I’ve built my life. A street you hardly know, so is just like any other street for you. And a street that to me signals four minutes if I’m not going via Tesco. I don’t think you needed to give me the bowls because I don’t think we owe each other all that much if we just used up all our time. Still, the guilt of the one who says. But still like six years earlier my friend said across the pub, it is so much worse if it isn’t your choice. And now, I’ve lived both lives and it’s not clear. Although, I did die that January.

Everyday I try to eat at least two oranges and I keep buying broccoli and spinach. What she said in the book, how she barely had a day apart from him for 40 years. Is that it? To ask someone to check everything you write. To allow them that much trust to say, change the last sentence. And then to realise that you only ever knew a tiny piece of them and they only ever knew a piece of you. What about all the rest? What about that night of dreams, close to the surface that wakefulness was almost the whole night and the dreams were, almost the whole night. I don’t know, I don’t know what we’re saying of it anymore. I don’t think I need the response to know you, and I don’t know if I’m doing it again. So here for now, every single day I wonder if it would be a mistake to have a second coffee. And I’ve just started keeping it in the freezer instead.

Now I can’t stop thinking about the geese who fly around confused until they get lost and also die. I can’t stop thinking about what she said about time. The resolve never comes where you think it’s going to come. The resolve you seek is nothing but someone else’s words holding you together until it’s time to let them go again and find your own. It’ll regress again, sooner than you think, and then one day swimming something will move. And it still won’t be over. It’s just it’s only time where we know. And it’s only a whole lifetime. And it’s only the distance and the silence really where there’s something real to know. Because, we can all say the words and because, we all did. And because the words said without much thought beyond the moment, ruined lives and became fences we wrap around and cling to long after the fact. Will another coffee wake me up or is it only the rain that can do that?

Still I took pictures of pages of the book and put it under my skin as something to remember forever. Because I really don’t know and I realised the thing is that you really don’t know either. We can’t organise it like everyone says we can. We can’t exist by laying out our expectations and making space only for people to operate within those parameters. Let go of all preferences. Is there something else to be found underneath that. Let go of all preferences. So what else is there if I didn’t try to organise this and you based on the template some sorry fools set out for us. Then, they are no happier. They exists no more freely in their bones than me on day 14 of my cycle. And they wake with the same dread as me on day 19 of my cycle. It isn’t what we think it is to get the ring and the shared choice of paint. You can wake up and everything can fall apart. You can promise and change your mind. They can. Someone will die. None of it is anything more than a day to pretend was the best day of your life.

So what else is there? And can you ask why you want it so much? And can you answer your question? And can you still lay your hands on their body when the only thing they need is your hands on their body. I don’t know, but the geese, they get lost and we do long before. And it is not sorry to say it’ll all be torn up and it won’t be as destroyed as we imagined, because something remains.