I buy a cheap postcard in a seaside town. The picture is of a dog wearing sunglasses, pasted crudely over a view of the Calanques. On the back I write prends soin de toi in fat letters, recalling Sophie Calle’s attempt to weave an understanding for herself in the absence of one.
I remember that first spring morning we spent in the garden, drinking coffee and eating sticky pastries. We went for a walk in the woods after and the early Saturday sun was casting shadows on the floor and kids were playing football in the clearing and I felt cocooned, in his big green coat, in those wild woods, in whatever that feeling I was afraid to name might be. Before I left he carefully packed up the last piece of the pie he’d made for us the night before and all the way home I thought about how no man had ever taken care of me so purposefully before, somehow known the softness I needed without me having to say it out loud.
Before him, I did not know how to want things that were good for me. I did not know I could love someone without being destroyed by it, without setting myself alight and burning to the ground in the process. Being with him felt like living inside a safety net; for the first time I saw a brief glimpse of what it might be like to have someone to come home to, a sense of stability among the chaos. Something holding my solar system in place, so I could spiral and drift in the knowledge that I’d never fall too far.
Back in Paris I feel him everywhere. I think the universe is trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what. I cry on the floor of a toilet cubicle in the library and I’m so close to reaching out with the questions that have been caught in my throat for weeks and then the news comes in that America is opening and the world shifts on its axis again and I think of seeing the city from above, glassy towers and wide grid avenues and yellow cars and I remember that you cannot take everything with you when you travel. I know this, I’ve always known this, and yet the lesson won’t stick.
Sometimes, in the half-dream space, I close my eyes and meet him at a bench on the heath. It’s usually sunset, a cartoon-pastel sunset of burnt yellows and bruised purple. Sometimes I hold his hand and sometimes he puts his head on my shoulder and sometimes he’s crying when I get there but mostly we just sit, and talk, and I feel the gentle love that stretched between us like invisible radio waves, like light from a distant star, and then I fall asleep.
I take a photo of a grave in Pere Lachaise and mark out a letter so it spells his name. It’s supposed to be funny but it comes out angry, or worse, sad. In the end, I press the postcard inside a book, trying to tuck my memories in there too, nestled neatly between the paragraphs. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but at least it dissolves the hurt into something a little more like tenderness.
A few months later, I return to London. It’s Sunday and the churches are full but there’s no sin left now, only absolution. I go to the coffee shop on his corner then I weave through the village towards the heath, ghostly shapes murmuring at my heels. The seasons have changed and the trees are bare but the sunlight glints through. I turn my face towards it, and for a brief moment everything glows. I call a friend to say hello and she tells me she’s met someone new and I can hear in her voice that she’s in love and I feel the warmth of that come through the phone and crystallise somewhere inside of me too.
I sit alone on the bench overlooking the ponds, that place I went to so many times in the dreamscape. I smoke a cigarette as I watch the sun descend into the water, a golden orb dipping slowly out of sight. The world keeps turning. For a moment, I feel as though I can hold it all inside the palm of my hand. Watch the way it curves and spins. Watch the way it never stops. I want to live my life in the glare of full technicolour, even if it hurts. Break my heart to make it bigger. Crack me open and let the light come flooding in until it fills every corner, every crevice.
I don’t want to sit in the dark anymore. I thought I was buried, but really I was growing roots.
I speak to him inside my head, hoping the words will sink into the wood for him to find. Even though you could not let yourself love me, you still loved me better than anyone.
All the way back I feel lighter, somehow. The station is empty and when I emerge at the other side darkness has fallen. I go home and look at the garland of plastic leaves wrapped around the stairs leading to my room, the ones my flatmate put up back when the hurt was still fresh. I think about how much small, strong love there is for me to take. The world keeps turning. Another day begins.
Optional soundtrack: Someone Like You 2 - Malaki