Mourning Routine

shiv

I knocked on the door for the first time during our co-habitation experiment. I'm not sure whether you replied to the sound or if I just forgot myself and barged in as usual. Either way, you were still in bed, even though it was after eight o'clock in the morning. But this was our daily push-and-pull routine, at least during the week. As usual, I was up and about. Dressed in a pseudo-festive red shirt, trying to get ready for work like it was any other Thursday.

My eyes stung as soon as I came into the room. My ambition to become a stoic went up in smoke. You saw me struggle with your sleepy-cagey eyes. I saw you were wearing pajamas.

"Come here, sit down."

You made room and I sat and small-talked like a thousand times before, although it felt strange to know I would no longer have anyone to tell my daily minutuae to. Nobody who would necessarily care about the mysterious cut I'd developped on my finger overnight, or how I'd showed the Chinese doctor a blue tongue when she asked to see it, laughing at how this corresponded more to my moods than the fact I'd just drank a coloured sports drink.

I threw my pride on the floor and admitted I was terrified. I told you my childish fears about change and the scary practicality of separating. You were patient and filled your reponses up with decency and generosity. It made me feel better. Calmer. Safer in a world we'd flipped upside down.

"I still love you, you know."
"I still love you too."

We embraced like it was the most natural thing in the world, and it was. I wondered if it was true, if people really did look more beautiful when walking away.

The boundaries were blurred and fuzzy and we were trying to walk a new line between old familiar tactility and new cautious distance. The sadness no longer hid in the corners with the dust. It was all around us now, between us. But you refused to bow down to it, holding onto your cheekiness in the midst of our unravelling. Whether it was to lift us both, or yourself, or just your charming chancer nature, I'll never know.

"How about a last roll in the hay, for old times' sake?"
"I know there's a phrase for that, I just can't think what it is at the minute."
"Well, how about it?"

I smiled, successfully for the first time, and meant it.

"Just because you don't know where your next roll is coming from, don't think it's going to be with me."
You just grinned. "Can't blame me for trying."
"Of course I can't."

With that, I got up with a lighter heart, passed your suitcase without looking at it, and headed out the door.