Else Fitzgerald

You wonder if he might be watching for you. A bright fizz rocketing across the dark sky, like a forgotten satellite. If he’d still think of you after all this time. In the city it could be raining, the sea surge lapping at the sides of the old skyscrapers. So much sunk in those grey ceaseless waters, churning over the tarmac, the tram tracks, the cemetery with the graves in crooked rows like old teeth. When the coordinates are right, the station clearing the edge of the shield for those few hours, letting you glimpse Earth through the scopes, you imagine your eye following a beam of light down into the mess of concrete and water, right there to the windowsill where you used to hang your washing.

~

What does it feel like?

You know, Bo. You’ve seen.

Describe it to me anyway.

Their voice in your blood, thrumming.

It feels like…

Like all those bonfires burning in backyards we stood around, bottle necks wrapped in our hands, back before the electricity went out and the beers were still cool against our fingers. Like the sharp edge of a knife, like a papercut, like the impression left on your eyes after glancing at the sun.

…breaking. Breaking open.

Love used to make you feel like you were drowning and it was glorious, back before you knew what drowning really felt like. The sound of his voice, the weight of his body in the bed, skin disappearing beneath the rough sheets. A small sound in the back of your throat, a noise like waking.  A memory of him saying quietly ‘everybody wants to fall in love’.

What was it like after?

After the bees, the bears, the birds, that loss.

After the flood?

Yes.