When she arrived, a little drunk, I told her
something bad had happened,
she looked tired,
you’re going to tell me you were raped or something?
I shook my head.
I didn’t say a thing.
She asked when I thought I might be moving out.
Soon, really soon.
There was another wedding that week, Ava.
The creamy-faced estate agent of my youth
had finally met her match
and I
had been invited to the reception.
I took a train back home – home home, Ava –
the brisk salt air,
the drystone walls,
the scrubby moorland
and its creepy cottages.
I thought I might bump into the slightly older lad
that I’d been seeing all those years ago –
the paint-flecked one, the one I should have
stayed with maybe –
I was excited –
and he was there, Ava – first person that I saw on
entering the room –
so strong and warm – the same, it seemed –
unchanged – sturdy as I remembered, boyish still.
Once, Ava, I asked him if he’d ever had an
existential crisis –
what’s existential? He replied.
Oh, to be so firm! To live so in the body!
I’d chosen a dress that said
I live in the city now. Hair up.
You look nice, he said.
Wine.
Then shots.
A glass of whisky.
Dancing madly with other people’s children,
parents, husbands,
a bump
