Second Love

I've created something inside my head; a fraction of a seed, a growing thing. I can feel it there, defined by its surroundings, despite its miniscule size. I am terrified of where this is all leading; I am holding onto the past by a thread. I wear a dress I've had since I was eighteen, the shape of my adult self, but barely anything more. Back when the world was made of the sky and hundreds of pairs of eyes cast adrift on the endless night-time. I try to define myself by who I used to be, but now there are silvery fine lines around my eyes, the valleys carved by smiles, and I am less certain. Less certain; more knowing.

I married him in spring, on a day that smelled like cut grass and hops. The wind was blowing north-west up from the brewery across the river and I came to equate the smell of hops with happiness. Later on, after I found out about his affair, when they ought to have meant a broken heart, they still smelled like happiness to me. Funny how things work out.

It's been four years since I signed the papers and cast myself gloriously, painfully adrift from him. It's been four years since I looked at anything closely at all: my life, trundling along like a one-speed bike; my reflection, growing greyer and fuzzier around the edges; my friendships, founded on nostalgia and getting left behind. The wine I drink on a Friday night is the same kind I've been buying for the last ten years. It tastes the same. Everything tastes the same.

But now. I don't know what happened. One minute I was walking home with a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. The next I was lying on the pavement. Next thing I knew, I was being driven home in your estate car, the window open and my eyes unable to focus on anything, the wind flowing through the car, in between our bodies, the faint smell of hops on the breeze. When you pulled up in front of my house, you handed me your embossed business card and said if I needed anything, to call. The world seemed grey and the sky heavy; your eyes were a kind, grey-green, and, for some reason, I thought about colour schemes. I thought about the lack of colour in my world and my faded upholstery.

You ended up coming in and having a cup of strong coffee.

This thing that I created in my head, I think it was created by me. But I think, perhaps, it was half because of you. Half because of you; the other half because of me. And now it's there it won't go away. And when I close my eyes I can see it, And now when you call me after work, and now when we walk through the park on quiet summer weeknights, I can feel it.

It's there, on the breeze. And I am greying, and I am different.

Jam Jar

I live in the past. The past is located nowhere; I keep it in a jam jar on my bedside table. The jam jar contained jam once, but now it is full of air and specks of nothing. I stare at it before bed, I talk a little in its direction, quietly, and then when I sleep I am inside it, staring out at the world of my bedroom, smiling a tremendous smile.

When I am thirsty I can go and turn the tap on, hold a glass under it, switch the tap off and gulp the water down in five seconds flat. When I am hungry I can put some bread in the toaster, wait for it to pop up and then eat it dry from a cracked plate until I think I might choke. Whatever I require, I can have.

I take this to mean that the thing I need the most I will one day get. The thing that I need, in every possible way, not just physically, is not here, but one day, somehow, it will return.

So I keep the idea of you in a jam jar, to remind me what is coming one day. I watch the specks of nothing intently, thinking that they may be specks of you in the past, or perhaps in the present, somewhere. I think about parallel universes; the specks of nothing may be something somewhere else; the nowhere may be somewhere. Nobody knows the answers. Nobody has ventured that far. I intend to.

So when I reach the summit, it is with the jam jar. I am on the very top of the world. My blood is the texture of porridge, apparently. My lungs are slow. I would very much like to eat a boiled egg. The sky is everywhere, including at my feet. I know that now. I know that everything is there, right there, where I can touch it. As I fall, I hear you saying "I love you" and I say that I love you too. I do. I do.

One day, I will be back. If I am needed, I will return.

The Coastal Path

I take off along the coastal path in my worn-out running shoes, shorts and a red windbreaker. The sun is visible but fuzzy through the clouds and the wind whips my hair up and around. I walk-jog over the hard-packed sand, pock-marked with thousands of vague feet outlines, and I think about how many years people have walked this path and the places they may have been headed. I don't know where I am headed. Possibly nowhere; possibly everywhere at once. Insights such as these can only transpire with hindsight; I am unable to squint into the future the way some people seem to be able to. When I try to, I feel blinded, as though driving into the sun just before dusk. The most beautiful time of day. The clouds whirl lightly above me and it's as though there is a gentle current flowing through the sky; I think that perhaps if I made myself dizzy enough, I would be unable to tell the sky from the sea. I often feel upside-down that way.

When I was a kid, I would lie on my bed backwards, with my head hanging upside-down off the end. When my mother asked what I was doing, I told her that I was simply looking at things from a different perspective. My room looked completely different the wrong way up. I thought that perhaps everything would, if you looked differently. It made me wonder if all the things that seemed so familiar really were so. It made me wonder if I could change my entire world with a movement or a turn of my head. The possibilities in the world seemed endless this way, and my wonder at it become insatiable.

About a mile down the coastal path, I speed from a walk-jog into a run, a sprint, and I listen to my breathing, short and sharp, and I run until I cannot carry on. I stop beside a huddle of rocks that are sheltered from the wind beside a tree, and I sit and watch the fuzzy sun move imperceptibly across the sky like the minute hand on a clock when it is half four on a Friday. I stretch my legs out in front of me and tense them, watching the muscles change and transform. Suddenly, the wind drops and the world becomes bright and bleached by the sun. The sea fades on the horizon. Everything is quiet.

Notes Under the Doorway

At 7:02am it was completely dark; by 7:08am it was completely light, sun high and buoyant. The time on the clock hovered, changed and blurred. My eyes felt strange. I felt heavy, like I'd woken at 6am but it was actually 6pm and I'd slept the day away. But it wasn't 6pm. It was 7:08am. I was confused.

I rode my bicycle to work, squinting at shapes as though I was new in the world.

In the evening, I decided to cycle home a different way from work. I cycled through a car park that led to a busy street full of restaurants. I could smell curry and a sweet, heavy scent that seemed to invade the air and stand there, unmoving, while I cycled through it, my legs spinning and straining against its weight. There were men sitting on the chairs that crowded the pavement, talking loudly, drinking tiny cups of coffee. A cat sat in a window, watching. There were children running, holding brightly coloured ice-cream cones. The sky was orange, then purple. I cycled past a hospital I'd never seen before.

I was hopelessly lost. The sky turned from purple to grey, and, as I cycled, night fell down around me like a heavy curtain. I panicked. Eventually I found my way and cycled back through the car park, no lights on my bike, unable to see the ground in front of me. I felt fear rise up inside me until I could taste it.

Then a tiny voice in the darkness.

When I got home, I found a note from you under the doorway. It was a blue cartoon comic strip featuring superheroes and villians. You wrote eloquently and informally of formal matters; I didn't understand your tone or your intention. I was late, but I wrote you back a letter full of bad handwriting and clumsy phrasing. I told you about the car park and the darkness. I walked to your doorway on the floor above mine and slid my note under the little gap by the floor. I could see the light from your room pooling out to the hallway, but it stopped just before it could illuminate my feet.

I walked back down to my room and looked at the clock. Outside the night pushed into the windows but didn't get in. Inside, by the light of a lamp, I lay and thought about the orange-purple sky and your blue superhero, until about half an hour had passed, and I heard the little shuffling sound of a note being pushed under my door.

Spring

It felt like spring today. The air was lighter and smelt different, a bit like laundry on the line after a fabric softener spin cycle. It wasn't completely dark at 5pm, the street lights were only just coming on, cars were slowly creeping along, birds were flying low, so strange in the city. I saw a spider on an external wall. My shadow under the fluorescent supermarket sign was dark, but I knew that I was really covered in light: the light in my eyes, the spark in my brain, the hint of a flame growing in my heart.

I breathed in and it was like everything was new, like a window had been opened and fresh air let in. I thought about the staleness of the grey stagnant air before; the cold, but not-cold-enough heavy days with their rain and their clouds and their stillness. Now the wind had come and blown everything around, upside down and inside-out. I felt inside-out, like you could see what I was thinking. And I don't know what I was thinking, or even who I was, turned into confusion by a 25mph gust of westerly wind. Eventually I became someone else, someone new, someone fading in the half-light in between the sun and the moon.

On days like today, the earth reaches with silent fingers, offering up its treasures. A certain way of looking; the angle of a beam of light. The sound of the spring coming; a sound like jostling or whistling or taking things apart or putting things back together. The sound of a clock pushed forward. The lightness of the air. The breath that keeps on coming, the breath that is taken away.

There is no synonym for life;
exhaustive yet incomplete by nature,
full and empty almost simultaneously;
forever diminishing
And like tea from a cup, I'm drinking it up.

Anchored

I grow up in a city with low, loaded skies that make it difficult to grow up.

Most of the time it is safest to stay close to the ground, to walk where you need to go quickly and without making any noise; to help with what needs doing around the house without complaining; to comb and plait your hair neatly; hang out the washing; take the rain; tuck yourself up in clean, bristly sheets; dream small dreams.

When the sun does comes out, as it occasionally has to, we sit for an afternoon in the garden, my mother and I, eyes closed, speaking only when it's time for the tea run, moving only when it's time for tea. Then we boil up the potatoes, cut up the onions, melt the butter, and eat silently in the garden when my father comes home from work, the shadows getting longer and longer as time marches into night.

When the light eventually gets pushed out, I go to bed but not to sleep. I sit by the window watching the stars slowly appear, as though someone is switching them on. I feel small, but not pushed down. In those moments, I feel like I'm floating up, up, growing, and life is amplified, unravelling, but beautiful, and slipping through my fingers like vapour.

My mother says dreaming is pointless and that looking upwards only makes you trip over things. Marry a man with a job, get a house, have kids. Sorted.

I turn 16. It rains for 60 days straight. I get a job in a chicken factory. I work there for 2 years; thousands of chickens come in alive and leave dead. Something in me dies. I meet a man 3 years my senior. I don't know if I love him. We marry. I am crystallised, or fossilised, or crushed into tiny pieces.

The sky moves forever, regardless. I get pregnant. I sleep and dream of a sky that is forever churning, thickening like cream becoming butter, pinning me to the ground.

My son is born on a sunny day in May and I am instantly in love. That night, after my husband has gone to bed, I open the curtains in the living room, stare at the moon full and low, my son sleeping in my arms, his breath low and new, and I am floating, buoyant with love, but anchored, and grounded, at last.

Another Sunny Day

We felt, that day, almost invincible, a sense of time spread out in front and everything to play for, so let's run, run, run, into the day; smack, bang directly into the sun. But also, we knew, somewhere inside ourselves, that things would come to an end eventually, so there was also a feeling of urgency, of time running out, of all of the everything laid out in front of us becoming gradually less, of things receding. We knew that we were both invicible, because we were young, and not, because we were alive.

The sun was bright in the sky.

We drove your car along the coast, the sun smashing its way in through the windows, blasting us with light, with life. We opened the windows and the wind wooshed through the car. We listened to a tape of songs your father used to play you when you were young. We sang along to Simon and Garfunkel. The day felt endless, a clear sea with no bottom.

A colourful coral reef teeming with life.

We bought ice-creams. They melted in our hands as we laughed and hurridly ate them. We ran along the beach, hand in hand, and afterwards lay by the sea, watching the sun-dappled waves making their way to shore and then back out again. I ran into the water, waded out up to my thighs. You pushed me in. I swam, submerged, and kissed you.

I fell asleep in the bright light and dreamed vividly.

Ice-creams & Discarded Cider Cans

It was the middle of summer. We took it in turns to impress you. I bought a skirt shorter than any I had ever owned before, read books by authors whose names I couldn't pronounce, and dyed my hair purple. Elaine coloured her eyelids in a shade between grey and black, plaited her brown hair into tiny plaits, and started learning guitar.

You and your friends concocted a plan.

You charged us 50p each to hang out with you for a week of the summer holidays.

We were giggling and in awe.

You were two ice-creams richer.

We wandered along the cycle path, kicking the discarded cider cans out of our way. We talked, endlessly, about bands, and people we knew. We sat on the grass verge drinking cheap cola out of plastic bottles. We stayed out too late and went home with headaches from the sun and the glare still in our eyes.

I bought a pair of plastic sunglasses. I fancied myself as older than I was. Elaine and I never thought that you were really hanging out with us for any reason other than pity.

When you bought us ice-creams one afternoon, I knew you felt bad.

Elaine clipped her hair up and tried to catch your eyes as she licked the melting ice-cream cone in a way she thought you might like. I looked at the ground, sepia toned through my sunglasses. Your eyes were hidden too. I imagined them rolling, taking none of this seriously; we were both younger than you and you were above all this, right?

That night, Elaine and I decided our friendship was more important than boys. We listened to the same song seventeen times, shouting how it spoke to us, and this summer was so important, and how we were the very best of friends. We were seventeen years old and thought we knew everything.

Two days later, the last day of our bargain with you, it rained. We went to the cinema. Sat quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw your hand touch Elaine's, saw you glance furtively at her in a way that said very clearly it wasn't the first time.

I didn't let on that I'd seen anything and we parted ways that evening with hugs and promises to see each other again soon.

Elaine went to University at the end of summer and we stayed sporadically in touch, but it was never the same.

I only ever saw you again once, years later, back at the same cinema, with two hyperactive children and a woman who looked at least five years younger than you. You looked at me as though you were trying to recall where you knew me from, smiled briefly, and were gone.

Mellow Drizzle

I remember the night cracked open like a cold beer, the fizz as you flipped the bottle opener sideways, the sky opening up into the crystal white light of Friday evening.

I felt like it could have swallowed us whole.

The night cracked open and shared itself with us. The first taste on your lips, the sigh and the sit down, the hazy glance, a smile lurking.

Mellow drizzle.

It is a rare thing to be afraid of nothing.

Sweetness

I listen to violin music. I miss you. I imagine myself missing you, dramatically, waving a hankerchief into the wind, atop a mountain. The tears that run down my face are big, and dramatic, and wild. I am wild with missing you.

I can't even breathe.

I listen to a rock song. I shake my hair. I ruffle my hair myself and it's not the same.

I imagine candles and ceiling tiles, stuck fast in the place where I feel empty.

All the sweetness in and out and within the world, I remember in a single moment. I squeeze those molecules of sweetness in, using only my memory. There was a look we exchanged which said it all. I wanted to stay, to say it again, and again, and again. Over and over and over we went, over the same ground, slipping in our sock shoeless feet, laughing as we went, crashing into walls, jumping up at them, through them, across them. To hell with boundaries, we said, life is short and we are boundary-less, we move beyond that, and if you aren't touching all four walls of a room simultanously how can you be sure, I mean really sure, that they are all actually there?

I listen to a love song. It says little about love.

I soar away, elsewhere.

I count down the days until you return. I imagine the smell of your neck. I put my hands flat on a wall, and my ear, and I listen for a sign of the past, residing in the insulation.

There is none. Nothing in the wall, anyway.

When you return I will be wearing a blue dress. I will gather flowers. The sky will last forever.

My Summer Friend the Garden Gnome

In the morning you told me you had fallen out of love with me.

In the afternoon I sat in the garden staring at a garden gnome, trying to denote the truth from the cracks on its faded green hat.

I failed to find the truth. All I knew was that my heart was broken, and I didn't know how anything could carry on.

The next day was a beautiful summer day, no clouds, bright sunshine. I again took to the garden, this time choosing a spot under the apple tree. I looked at the shadows of the leaves dappling my winter-white legs; I plaited my hair into tiny plaits; I closed my eyes and the sun danced; I reached my hands through the overgrown grass; I smelt the earth.

I felt small.

Days passed and I did very little. You sent me a text message saying "sorry"; a word that offered me no comfort at all.

I didn't reply.

My mother laid out eggs and salad at lunch time, and I picked at end-pieces of bread rolls, chewing the same piece over and over and over, tasting nothing. I would stare into space without blinking, letting the tears gather without letting them go. The world would become flooded until the water got too heavy and fell.

It seemed endless.

All summer I spent in this daze, wandering from room to garden to kitchen to bed. My mother tried to talk to me, talk some sense into me, but I was glazed and my misery was impenetrable.

I was a full stop.

But then Autumn came. First I noticed myself noticing the browning of the leaves. Then I required a cardigan for my daily meeting with the garden gnome. Then it was September and a week until the beginning of term at college.

I spent an afternoon sorting out my books. I called my friend. I heard my voice lift itself out of monotone. I cried. I went back to college.

I survived.

Talking Big

Teeth bare in a mouth, an expression that says "get away" or perhaps something else; the lines on a sheet of paper, hemming your words in when you wanted to TALK BIG; the scrawl on paper napkins, that three-pints fuzziness and the "truths" you wrote in unromantic, wonky letters.

You were never a poet.

But I knew what you meant.

I Was Not Alone

When I first heard your voice I was nine years old, curled up on the top layer of a custom-built triple bunk bed, pushed up close to the ceiling, touching the popcorn texture of the wallpaper with the palms of my hands as I tried to jump, feet-first, into sleep.

You said "Hello".

I glanced down into the inky darkness and saw you standing there, your arms crossed over your chest, so serious. You seemed to be lit from underneath, or perhaps within. My eyes were tired. I squinted to try and see you more clearly but you disappeared.

I was left with an imprint of your light when I closed my eyes, like when you look directly at the sun or a lightbulb. I closed my eyes and your light danced, was first the sun and then the Earth and then and then it was me and my sisters, holding hands in the living room on someone's birthday. I feel asleep and dreamt of a sun, brighter than our own, hanging lazily in the sky on a summer afternoon, and my sisters and I swimming in a lake, and you, standing off to the side somewhere, barely visible.

When I awoke you slipped away from me and I forgot you'd ever been there, at least for a while.

When I was eleven I saw you on the television, wearing a suit, debating budget cuts and war in the Middle-East. Shortly before this I learned about World War II at school and as a result renounced God. I was a melodramatic child.

During the interview, you looked directly at me and said, "Hello".

I remembered the night in the inky darkness and your light.
I wondered who you were and what you meant when you said "Hello".
It was a mystery.

When I was fifteen I listened to music about being so alone in the world and what is the point and I dyed my hair black and my parents said Your Behaviour Gives Us Cause for Concern.

You popped up in the middle of one of my favourite CDs, your voice, quietly, saying "Hello". Later that night I closed my eyes and you were there, arms crossed, so serious. I mumbled, half-asleep, "who are you?" and you disappeared.

I thought perhaps I was going insane.

When I turned eighteen, I saw you in a cup of coffee and thought, this is it, the descent into madness. But I found my dreams were waves and not jagged shapes, and that my eyes looked less tired.

And then I saw you wherever I went, walking along in front of me, arms folded, so serious, a red jacket and an old-fashioned hat. You were ageless, you were all ages. You rarely said more than "Hello". I studied Maths and Science and I worked out the statistical probability of life being meaningful in any traditional sense, of the existence of God; it was low.

And yet you followed me.

And you said "Hello".
And I was not alone.

Coffee Shop

In the queue for cheap coffee on a rainy Wednesday morning, the traffic stops and Mr Jones, aged 74, realises that life goes on.

The school bus drives past.

In a mobile classroom, the teacher separates the children into groups, not realising that this event sparks a conversation which is the catalyst for a wedding 15 years later.

The teacher goes home and his wife of 25 years has broken her leg falling down the stairs. He waits in A & E with her for 5 hours and carries her to bed at 1am, stroking her hair until she falls asleep.

Later that week Mr Jones plucks up the courage to talk to the lady he sees in the coffee shop every day. She smiles.

A man who has just left his wife queues for strong coffee after a sleepless night and sits for hours writing a letter with a chewed biro. It is the first time he has ever truly considered his feelings about anything.

In the office block across the road a 33 year-old man makes his friend a morning cup of tea, milk one sugar. His friend is married and he has been secretly in love with her for exactly one year.

A medical student drops his friend off at work, a dreary office block, and afterwards crashes lightly into a lamp post. He tells the insurance company he was worrying about his mother, who broke her leg falling down the stairs.

Mr Jones and his female companion hear a crash and look out of the window; a car has run into a lamp post. They decide to leave and walk arm in arm through the park.

In the office block across the road a woman discovers her husband has left her just after her friend makes the morning cup of tea.

Mr Jones does something he never expected to do again; he goes to a jewellery shop to buy the sort of jewellery that accompanies a big question.

The Very Centre of Everything

Turn a corner. Stop. Release. Wheels stop turning. Sun hangs, heavy in the sky. Open the door, foot on asphalt, air conditioned air mixing with the hot California midday air. You breathe the air, take a step, slam the door behind you. Walk across the car park, into the grocery store, walking wide, air around you. You take a cigarette you rolled earlier, stick it behind your ear, close-cropped hair. The doors open, because you push them, and sounds of fridges and freezers and people talking hit you, life going on, all the essentials that we need for life.

You walk, aisle after aisle, picking tins of this and cans of that, your trolley growing full and heavy, fruits of the hunt stacked against one another.

All of a sudden, a shout, a shot, a gruff, muffled voice.

"Everyone get on the floor now!"

You run to the end of the aisle, a man with his face distorted by black wool stands, legs apart, while people crouch and cry, lie on the cold ground, shaking.

"YOU! On the floor NOW!"

The gun is pointing at you. Everything turns into slow-motion and you aren't thinking, your legs aren't even moving, or at least you can't feel them.

You do not know this is happening, but you're running, fast, lunging, punching the man in the face. A gun shot and searing pain in your left arm. You look down, disconnected from the pain you feel you see blood, bright red, so bright under the strip lights. The man is lying on the floor, scrambling around for his gun, which has slipped across the vinyl floor and under the comestics display. You punch him again, and again, until you know he's out cold. And you don't know who you are, this punching person. You grasp into your pocket, trembling, for your mobile phone, and you dial, with difficulty, "911", and then you lie back, so very tired, blood staining the floor and some tins of peaches which have fallen, while the sirens get louder until they are at the very centre of everything.

cosmonaut and astronaut and weightless

I am carried away, lighter than air, I am humming a tune, I am waving, my hands covered by gloves, my eyes by a screen. I almost feel like I am a feather, floating and dipping with the breeze, light, unfettered. And I suppose I am, in a sense, but my ascension is very much a pre-planned, orchestrated event, and I am heavier than a feather; something man-made is propelling me skywards.

When I think about this too much, I feel dizzy.

I think I see you get smaller and smaller even though I can't, I imagine your hand waving, backwards and forwards, and I know you are crying, hard, and I feel myself pushing back a painful, hot, tingly feeling behind my eyes.

I wonder, now, what I am doing. What was I thinking?

I imagine you at the dinner table, alone, with chat radio playing. They are debating abortion. Pro-choice, you stroke your belly and it swells, slowly. This is what I imagine. And it is too much.

I try to think about other ascensions, perhaps in a religious sense. I think this a good time to start being religious. Perhaps I am ascending to heaven, a rare individual. The bright sky and faded rainbow-colours and the crystals of moisture that hang there, sparkling; these are not simply earthly things, are they? There is more because there has to be more.

The walls around me shudder and shake. I am going fast. So very fast. I see blurs of black and gray and light. And then, eventually, I slow down, and I am weightless, even more weightless than a feather, and I close my eyes and imagine long grass, your black hair, the blue sky, and the stars I'm closer to now.

And I imagine the dinner table, and you, and I think of a new name: Valentina.

Valentina, I will not be long. And I will never leave you in this silence again.

Exciting news!

Metazen have published my story "Conversations With Machines", read it here.

Thanks Metazen!

Globe Lamp

The shape of a sphere in your hand, in the palm of your hand; an almost iridescent, glowing, beautiful thing, mysterious and inexplicable. You are in a small building atop a hill; the sky is heavy and grey and rolling like waves. The ground has the appearance of swelling, into the shapes of valleys and hills, purple, green and beige, up and down and the same again, punctuated by craggy rocks, some serious angles contending with the curves. You get the impression these shapes have evolved and are evolving; moving, slowly. Wind rushes past outside, invisible but making sounds and making things move, making things sway from side to side and in circles and in jagged shapes, making the window frames shudder and shake. And you think, the world is alive. It is very much alive.

And the shape in your hand is the shape of it, has the name of a representation of it, is a three-dimensional scale model of it, is beautiful, but, you think, barely even a start. Because the very real stuff is outside the window, on the streets you walk down, the buildings you sit in, places others have sat, and in the vast, vast, sky.

The Perfect Holiday, Out of Focus

A photograph of a photograph of strangers, blurry features, you can make out the blue sky, sand underfoot, human-shaped shapes, clothes white and blue, but little else.

You imagine a plane in the bright blue sky, a blurry plane full of blurry people, going to some unknown destination, coming or going, this way or that way. Vapour trails are blurry, hazy anyway, so here they remain the same, streaks of fluffy white crisscrossing the sky like words on a chalk board, spelling nothing, spelling journeys in abstract sentences, an in-flight meal, movie, and a complimentary mint.

An in-flight sense of adventure.

And on this plane sit strangers dressed in white and blue, sunglasses tucked neatly under necklines in anticipation, an admission of excitement. This, and the bottles of suncream stowed down beneath the seats, the three swimming costume choices, the flip-flops and the disposable cameras.

You imagine the sun bursting in the sky, providing enough light so no one ever needs to use the cheap plastic flash, bringing everything into focus with light and then obliterating it all with light too. And the sun bursting in the sky, lighting up the beach on which the strangers lie.

Their perfect holiday. Hair frizzed, salt-water taste on their lips, ice drinks in tall glasses, ice creams three times a day.

And the photograph, discarded in a taxi car, picked up by the taxi driver, put on a shelf with intentions to return it, and another photograph, inadvertently capturing the first for a second time.

The perfect holiday, out of focus.