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Recovery
I’m the kind of person who’d go to bed with a man who sells books, I think. He’d thumb pages as he dreamt. The guy asleep next to me is showroom-still. The creased sheets will mark him. In the morning he’ll wear a pattern like sand after the tide’s gone out. I lie back, try to summon last night’s exchanges. ‘Here, here’ I beckon our dusty grey, rabbit-fur-phrases. I’m drowsy — my head’s anvil-heavy, tight around my temples. I remember him stroking my hair, telling me to ‘sleep it off’, and I laughed. I tried to pull him on top of me, declaring, ‘I’m not going grey, I was struck by lightning!' A breaking yowl of fighting cats makes the air jagged, brittle, but I still have to shake him awake. ‘Hey, hey, was I struck by lightning?’ He groans, illuminates a grimace with his phone, ‘It’s 3 am, and yes, Stevie, you were, as you put it, ‘struck by lightning. Four times now, just two more to go’. He rolls over and is motionless again. I think of that trick magicians do, whipping a tablecloth from under plates and cups, disturbing nothing. I’d like almond croissants, black coffee and pomegranates as props. The desire reminds me that my greying hair’s nothing to do with electricity, and my words come out stumbling. ‘We have porridge for breakfast, don’t we? Because ‘there is nothing unsettling about cooked oats’?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Do you own a bookshop?’ ‘We met in a bookshop. Go back to sleep.’ ‘What book did you buy?’ ‘I didn’t. Go to sleep.’ Tom makes my porridge with milk, not water, sweetens it with a teaspoon of honey, that’s something. |