Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. My commute to the university lasts forty-two to fifty-eight minutes, depending on the trains, and the shoes I’m wearing, and I try to prioritise kindness, when I see someone taking up space with one of the folding bikes you have.

I’m spending seven out of every twenty-four hours on my phone.

Baby hippo memes are all the rage. Baby hippo eating melon. Baby hippo sleeping, screaming, bobbing around in a pool, so content, and no concern for the future, or anything other than the precise moment. I could send you one now, as a test, which is exactly the sort of shit you’d expect from me.

I saw you a few months ago, waiting in line at the barbers: your face profiled through a plate glass wall, features empty and still. 

(You always had an admirable capacity, for quick oblivion.)

It had been too long for me to wave, mouth hello.

It had not been long enough.

You had a thing about Jean Seberg, to whom you confidently ascribed a timeless sort of beauty—said it as if you were proffering a unique observation. You liked her hair, so closely clipped. The blondest blond. I tried not to take offence, but honestly? I’m sensitive, I know, I know. Too long coddled, and far too involved with my parents, still.

We spent eight dusty days with your father in Rome; you were embarrassed about his crying, and the animal reek of our perspiring bodies. That hotel room, the terrible drain, and bakery hot. Each of us wholly irritated by the other’s breath.

We spent 1,128 days together. I spent longer on my thesis. I spent longer with my mid-century poet, than with you. 

(But at least that’s argued through, written down, nattily bound.)

Once, I was a whole three weeks late, then a blessed deluge in the cereal section of the Tesco below your flat.

 At 6.45am you played Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, timing out your three-minute showers.

The song is 3:46, really, but who’s counting?

(Me, I was. I was always, always counting.)

I want to be with you everywhere

Walking a loop around the park, you paused and said you could actually see yourself loving me, one day. Would you throw a bone to a dying dog? I replied, and it was the first time I’d said something that genuinely pleased you. 

I’m averaging 2,200 steps. Make a note, pin it to my brain: Must, must, must do better.

Some days, I barely seem to move at all, shut up in my rooms, wrapped up in my books. I’ve leaned into a scholarly sensibility. You’ll get gout, I hear you warn, because I made the mistake of telling you my brother had it once, as a cider drinking, kebab eating youth.

You were exhausted by my lethargy, and you corrected my pronunciation, publicly, finished my sentences when I let my words, trail, off— I ended up burning bright blue with rage. A newly formed star.

And, of course I know about your new one; there are still places where my life skims yours. She has long dark hair, like I do, a dimple in her chin.

(Yes, I’ve seen pictures. No, I won’t say where.)

And, of course I knew there would be love, again; it’s silly, really, that it hurts so much, down in the guts, in the soft pink mess we’ve all got going on in there.

I walk past your office sometimes—often—holding my breath.

Another day, another dollar, and so on, and so forth; time, it just keeps a-ticking.

A good memory: Doing impressions of everyone after a party, dancing home, arms swinging, drinking from whatever bottle we’d swiped off the sticky kitchen counter.

For balance: You telling me I don’t deliver jokes correctly, that it isn’t timing, exactly, but something in my pacing. Regardless, I ruin them.

And although I knew there would be love, again, I’m more awkward now. I haven’t aged into happy acceptance; I’m going the wrong way entirely.

Okay, another one: You making me soups with orange vegetables, blending out the lumps, stirring in cream and hot white pepper, because, I admit, you were nice, most of the time.

Light and space hurtle past. Memories degrade, are replaced by something shorter, brighter—in better focus. I catch you motionless through a glass wall, see you throw a dining chair into a mirror, and collect pink tipped daisies on a wet July morning. I watch you ladle soup into a deep brown bowl, and then you disappear. 

***

breakup Love Urban Life women's fiction