Bullet by bullet

I made some lists.

 

There were important names I couldn’t remember, people and events reduced to condensation on a table, initials, furtive glances at phonebooks.

 

I spent the actual day of my 21st with G.H. in the harsh magenta focus of a billboard laughing as we read print 15 storeys down, so it’s disconcerting that he became a sarcastic text message blasting an opinion I couldn’t decipher (only the punctuation, “?!” at the end of passive-aggressive politeness). 

 

I think you never trusted me because you thought you were another 8 digits I would never dial again. Certainly I don’t think I will. Yet God knows where you stand, at that privileged point reserved for, really now, besides you only Andrew: ask and you shall receive. Ask me to end the list at you. Ask me to take your name off it. Ask me why you’re even on a list at all. You won’t ask. I’m so relieved, don’t ask. More and more I don’t like your accidental hold on me, more and more I want to reject the abortive streak that characterized the person you couldn’t bring yourself to take a good look at. You shook awake something sad, wonderful and necessary in me and I resent and adore you for it. 

 

No one is a replacement for anyone else, but some nights all of you echo one another and I feel like a greying hearth cat watching imaginary faces in the fire. 

 

I had a great weekend, apart from this maddening list I shouldn’t have made. I don’t like lists.