Role Reversal
Fresher’s week. No peanut butter spattered work top, or wet tights cluttering the radiators. The toothpaste lid remains on the toothpaste tube, lined up in a neat row with our two toothbrushes. There’s a noticeable gap where the third one was. I spread the two brushes further apart.

Her room, a discarded hermit’s shell. The photograph on the side shows a little girl in braces holding a pink fishing net. I pull sheets from the bed, her adolescent scent hits me. I close my eyes. I will only allow myself this one moment.

The back door slams. He’s mounting the stairs two at a time, running into the room like an excited puppy, waving keys to the campervan he’s just parked on the driveway. His face an explosion of the youth I’d forgotten. I smile back at him and close the bedroom door.

The sheets can wait.

In This Room
He’s worried about the others.

The others who might get hurt.

I tell him, there are no others. There is nothing outside of this room, this locked door, this bed.

This moment.

People are always telling me to be more mindful. I’m being mindful now. Removing his shirt, mindfully. Pulling off my t-shirt, soaked with anticipation, it catches on my earring. I’m mindful of the earring slicing down my earlobe. I make a mental note to buy antiseptic tomorrow, on my way to the station. On my way to the train. The train that will whisk me back, belch me out in that other life, where I am all kinds of things to other people. Their entire universe, making it rotate.

But tonight, it is me rotating, spinning off these sturdy casters. The bind that has held me unbridling, unravelling.

In this room, with this man.

Smoke Screen

He pulls a tin of bait from an old canvas bag, faded to murky green. During the week, the tin of bait sits in the fridge, maggots wriggling in confinement alongside lettuce and a block of cheddar.

She lets go of the rod to get out the red tartan Thermos. Sharing a hot, strong tea from plastic cups that taste like summer picnics, they silently watch a duck’s feather float along the surface of the water.

Finished drinking, shaking the droplets into the grass verge, she reaches into her jumper and pulls out a ten pack of Marlboro’s from under her bra strap. She knows he ain’t been near there in years, so it’s a safe hiding place.

Taking pity, she lights one from her own and holds it out to him between yellowed fingers. He takes it, and they sit together in silence, smoking and fishing.