four

four

the therapist keeps telling me it’s okay to cry. it was our fourth session today, and i think she’s disappointed that i haven’t cried yet. if i told her i haven’t cried once in all the time you’ve been dead, i think she’d start writing furiously, like she does whenever there’s a delicious juicy moment for her to nibble on. i’m trying not to give her anything else. i want to make it as hard as possible

i don’t know why i hate her

it’s not her fault that she can’t help me

but i think i resent her for trying

for the very suggestion that i might be okay without you

for thinking that nodding while holding an expensive pen and wearing a taupe suit dress would do anything to make me better. i can’t be better without you. i won’t let myself.

if i let myself even consider the fragment of the thought that ham and cheese is kind of cute, then i can’t have loved you very much, can i? and i doubt all the things in the world, but i don’t doubt that i love you

after therapy, i called in sick to work and i sat on a bench in pigeon park waiting for eddie

he shuffles about the world with all this sunniness. despite all those years of longing, of being alone. i think he’s on to something with this photographer. the way she captured him, laughing, guard down. although eddie always has his guard down. he moves around the world as if he’s just happy to be here. you would like eddie. i think this all the time

i offered him the sandwiches i stole from sainsbury’s yesterday and he went for the ploughman’s. a wise choice since the other one was prawn. i thought better of eating a warm prawn sandwich, so i ate my stolen satsuma instead

‘how did you end up at the charity shop?’ i asked him. i’ve been wondering this for a while

‘i was looking for something,’ he said, eyes on the pigeon that flapped down for the crust of his ploughman’s, ‘and i kept coming back to see if it was ever donated. marjie and i got talking and eventually she offered me the position’

‘and you don’t mind working at ninety?’

‘retirement didn’t sit well for me. it’s not for the lonely,’ he said

‘you’re lonely?’

‘i was then. i’m not now. i met marjie. i met pushkin. i met you’

the pigeon he’d leant down to offer his sandwich to took the entire crust from between his fingers and then ran like hell

and this made eddie laugh

i love it when eddie laughs

it’s so sunshiney

i don’t know why some handsome older woman hasn’t snapped him up. i googled grace after eddie showed me the photo she took of him and i can just imagine eddie and grace in matching dungarees living on a riverboat somewhere, painting things and adopting stray animals and being happy

since i’d called off work, i went for a walk. i didn’t have a plan, but i made my way to the jewellery quarter. i walked past a postbox. and i stopped. i thought about posting the letters I’ve written to you. this one too. addressed to jake, somewhere hopefully in heaven

. i wonder what they do with all the letters addressed to places that don’t exist. if i worked in the sorting office, i would have to read them all, take them home with me like eddie does with his eddie shelf

but I didn’t post them and i kept on walking

and i wondered if i will ever be able to cry for you

please write back

(and i’m laughing again)

bells