was out of episodes –
there were sixty-five, each one nearly an hour long –
but it looped back at the end
of the final one, began again from the beginning and I
didn’t switch it off.
I thought about offering up my laptop to the twins,
but couldn’t do it –
instead I forced myself out
and to a party after work, to shake things
up, to check that I was still alive –
and who did I run into at this party,
Ava,
but the curly-headed guy from that awful
gastropub two years before.
Sweet fate, Ava!
Hot and fresh!
We hugged, we danced,
we flirted as we had before,
You disappeared! He said, what happened?
Jane, I said mysteriously.
He gave me half a pill, I swallowed it with my beer,
BOSH!
we kissed,
BOSH!
and I thought, now this is how it
should have been before.
Felt sick with the excitement of it.
Goodsick. Goodgirl. Notdead.
God he smelled so good, Ava.
But the pill was kicking in and I felt weird.
I went outside for air.
Sitting on a wooden bench I let the other people’s
conversations swirl around me.
A man beside me was gesticulating wildly,
cigarette in hand,
I don’t know, man, sometimes you gotta eat
shit, you know? You gotta eat shit.
A woman sitting cross-legged at his feet, looked
up at him,
her eyes were glazed and glittered.
