He's wearing dark glasses and I imagine grief or bruises. Is he drunk? Hungover? Perhaps he's got no eyes. Perhaps if he unpeeled the shades, there'd just be blankness. A look ricochets around the room, something unnameable and unstated caught for a second in the air. That frozen English withholding of love. I'm sick of it. He holds my hand, so provisionally I feel like a stranger. It's the first time he's touched me since I was six. His hand doesn't feel real. It feels prosthetic. Like a Marigold glove full of warm jelly. I'm too sad to tell him.
