There are still moments when I feel like strangling you – my fingers clench before I remember you’ve left – but you’ll be pleased to hear the urge is becoming less frequent. Truth be told, as soon as I started writing this letter I said to myself, It’s only been a few days since the last one, are you that fucking insecure? and the miserable answer is Yes, but you made me laugh so it’s alright. After all, every real relationship is riddled with flaws, isn’t it? and that’s the way it should be.

Yesterday I left the house (baby steps, baby steps) planning to ask Verity for some of her bread, but I was arrested by the sight of our the letterbox. I gazed at the creeping rust for the longest time. You remember that Japanese thing, wabi-sabi? There’s something in that, I think. I like the idea. Impermanence. Everyone’s thrown together in this life and we’re just trying to make the most of it, you know, nothing lasts forever but there’s a beauty in sabi, the decay. So when I went back indoors I found myself walking from room to room, marvelling at all these small imperfections. Nicks decorating the lime-coloured tiles you hated. Wine stains and loose threads defined the cushions. I even noticed the worn carpet down the middle of the staircase for the first time (and later on tread deliberately where the maroon pile still clung to the ends of its dignity). It came as no surprise when I realised I had been crying the whole time. Transience is hard to accept in the smallest of things.

I don’t know what I’m going to do today. I’m trying to hold myself together without much suc I’ve got my work cut out for me surviving till bedtime. It’s been a while since I’ve had to bother with small things like making my own tea (having to experiment with the number of sugars showed the years) or feeding Gaspard. Not that I begrudge you forcing me to do everything for myself. Maybe it’s what I need to move on. Although, it was unfair, very unfair, deserting me the way you did. I would have understood if you had told me you were leaving for someone else. We’re not made to be monogamous, after all. I’d have somebody to hate, somebody to rail against. It would’ve hurt less than having no goddamn reason. All I have now is the cat. And a pillow. Well, two pillows.

Enough of this. There’s a visitor coming over tomorrow, I think either the executor of your will, or the shrink he said I should see. I’m told she’s very good. Though, I do think he’s overreacting, it’s not like I’m hallucinating or hearing demonic voices. Hopefully she’ll explain when you’re coming back, as I haven’t been receiving your replies to my letters.

Love always,

x.

“Luke!” called his mother. “Dinner’s ready!”

He poked at his mashed potato with clear distaste. He imagined the backyard victims burrowing around his plate, white mush seeping through the holes he had pricked in them to form little potato worms shaped like grated cheese.

He focused on the blurring of brakelights as vehicles drew alongside incrementally, inch ahead inch behind inch ahead like the wind-kissed shiver of a metal petal, until at last they sped past fast. Liquid fireworks flowed slowly up the windscreen. Raindrops pattered and inhalations acervated: sonic terraformation. An altogether sensory mélange expelling thoughts he couldn’t quite grasp, explosions of notions that hecouldn’tquitecapture! He was enraptured, his mind was sent into flurries of recall.

Nanna! He cried. I’m scared. In the mirror above the sink he looked at the wet corners of his eyes. In the circle mirror standing beside the toothbrushes he first saw his flushed cheeks. In the mirror on the medicine cabinet he first noticed his trembling eyelashes. In the hanging mirror on the bathroom door he examined the remnants of a warm bath drip off his body.

Fqar haga!

Why are there so many of me?

She had a clock in every room, and in the garden, too. I like to know the time, she says. Some days it passes fast, some days it passes slow. Some days it doesn’t pass at all, and those days are the days she spends winding and battery-replacing. One day you can have the bright yellow cat-shaped clock on my bedside table.

(In his ear was a persistent drone, a faint sound like the final whisper of a packed elevator car dropping after the steel rope violently snaps).

You can’t keep wasting those grains of sand, bambino. Each one is precious.

The nervous boy opened his mouth again. “Marc, I don’t like–”

“Stop being boring,” Marc retorted happily. “Can’t you see how fabulous this is? We’re detectives before a crime. Look.” He paused his riffling to let a notebook fall open at random. “See how these words will soften, Oliver; imagine the letters stretching as each tear mixes with the black ink!”

A hesitant smile pulled up the ends of Oliver’s flushed lips. It was hard to deny Marc’s excitement, and, well, the girl wouldn’t be home for hours yet, would she? He wandered the small room aimlessly, listening to the sifting sounds from Marc’s corner, trying to relax the tension which had been building in his muscles since entering the house. Intense orange afternoon rays filtered through the curtains, revealing lazy dust motes like the cluttered starscape of a country sky. He wasn’t normally so cautious, but since meeting Marc every day was becoming more and–

The air was shattered by a shriek. Oliver spun around, excuses bubbling to his mouth, only to see his friend dancing with eyes full of glee and sunset.

“Look! Look! The creases!” he pointed at the bedsheets. “Can you imagine how she will run here, lie across the bed, clutch the covers, hug her pillow! Stuck in a spider’s web, legs outstretched, her heart will beat and beat and beat against her chest, trembling–”

“I don’t want to play this game any longer,” she whispered, and slowly pushed open her bedroom door.

—

Why, hello Nathan.

Afternoon, hair.

Do you mind telling me why there are a pair of scissors hovering in rather frightening proximity?

Ah, it has come to this, has it?

Come to what?

Well, we’re very soon to go our separate paths. Pursue different fates, if you will.

And when, pray tell, were you going to inform me of such?

I have been fundraising for your departure for at least a week now, you know.

This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’m terribly busy these days.

Just what, precisely, does a mop of hair perform to alleviate itself of spare time?

Oh, nothing really important. Preventing your ears from dropping off due to frostbite, sparing you of dangerous skin cancers, that sort of thing.

That’s wonderful–no, really, it is–but I’m sure I’ll survive our severance.

Ha! Without me, you aren’t you. Once I’m gone you’ll be forced to forge some new, lesser identity, to strike out as a different person with a vital piece missing. There’ll be a vast gulf where great waters once surged.

A vast gulf where… waters… Hold on. Why am I debating with my hair? Is this a daydream?

If only! If only it was! I can hardly bear this betrayal. To think that you would entertain the thought–

It’s far too late for such talk; she’s ready to cut now. I’ll miss you, a little.

No! Make her stop! Oh, hair number forty seven thousand and three, you were my favourite piece of me! Lo! Not another snip! Ah! Six thousand three hundred and fifty nine, you survived seventeen low-hanging branches and a vicious car door for this–the clippers, the clippers! My soul, my being, delivered to the floor like descent unto Hades! I’ll be back, mark my words; back, and long enough to strangle you, just wait–