Five years after he died, you move to Doncaster. Your friends ask why not India, or Thailand? A fresh start. But you remember him saying once how he loved the way the word Don-cas-ter rolled down the throat. You walk the grey streets, mouth open, tasting him in the air.
11 comments:
I love this, it's beautiful
So many of these are wonderful, but this one really got to me!
With fish and chips, you sit on a rusting bench. The vinegar stinging your lips, you reach across, patting his hand. He's not there. He always said he'd be there, like when you sat together at Whitby with chips and mushy peas the day you told him you were expecting Emily.
It doesn't matter that underneath her fumbling fingers, she can no longer feel a pulse. It doesn't matter that the globe on the coffee table now looks out of kilter and its axis casts an immovable dark shadow below. The world will keep turning even if she turns herself away.
'Anywhere in the world,' Colleen said.
'Here,' said Padreigh. 'In this armchair. With a good book. Three good books. And outside, bad weather, and no reason to leave the house.'
Except he does. In his head he does. Travels to all the corners of the world in what he reads.
Corbett has an atlas. Turns one page each day. Thinks about the place on the map. Imagines what it must be walking there. Across deserts sometimes; Corbett skips then, as though sand burns his feet. Or over snowy wastes, and he shivers on the bus in to work those days.
There’s a cottage on the hill. A cow in the field and seven sheep. Chickens keep close to the woman hanging washing out on the line. She speaks to the animals. As though they are friends. Tells them how things are in the world beyond. Or how things should be.
Plutarch plucks names and addresses out of a phone book. No one he knows. And he takes them to far away places from where he sends postcards. You would like it here, he tells them, fills the space. Then ‘love’ and his name scribbled so it can’t be read.
Aw thanks, Annie and Sue, and thanks too Pinkgecko, Kathryn and Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, for playing along! Brilliant.
Beautiful.Touching.
Thanks, Abha.
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