The two of them walk down a wide road. It is late Autumn and the gold leaves gather at the edges of the street where the pavement meets the lip of tarmac like a frame. Gilded. The lights are disturbed by sparkler rain that fizzes and dulls. Between them, a feeling of hesitant familiarity. They know only particular versions of one another that existed in a recent history overtaken by time. Her hair is longer, as is his. His skin has a couple more tattoos. Her skin has a couple more scars and incisions. Constellations dot across their bodies and a seed that the two of them sowed has continued to grow, relentless, despite the plowing effort of those four tablets she dissolved under her tongue, eleven weeks ago.
What do you think they’ll do with, you know -
Throw it in the bin probably.
She hated him for saying that.
He did too.
The apartment’s not the same since you left
He offers as an apology.
Later, she is told that there will be a cremation at a cemetery and that she may arrange a ceremony for you if she wishes. It makes her wince to think of you, outside of her like air she can’t inhale again. The thought of you existing outside of her, makes her feel like she wants to go somewhere very far away from her body. Like it’s not the same home without you in there. Like an empty apartment with all of the same furniture and sentiment, but with the life taken away.
The thought of you existing somewhere else, away from her, makes her feel like she wants to go somewhere so far into her body, too, so that she can be burned and turned into ash.
You continue to grow. You are a half formed word. An eye or name. Whisper or idea. You exist beyond explanation like a painting she looks at today after meeting you on the screen at the hospital again - a map of temperature and energy, clustered at her core.
Just try to tell yourself that it’s not a real person but a dream or a magic spell - she is told - it might make it all easier for you.
The exhibitions, later, contradict themselves. The titles give wavering advice. The art hesitates.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe, 1929
I don’t really think in terms of explanations, 1947
Espace Psychologique, 1939
La Mamma, 1973
You bring her to exhibitions across the city, trying to show her yourself in photographs and videos. In books. In songs. You find yourself in paintings of melting dreams and bodies, and you draw her towards these exhibitions, trying to bring yourself closer to her. Trying to help her define you. You try to tell her that you can’t die because you’ve never even lived. That you’re a dream. That you’re a promise. That you will always exist. That you never did.
To her, it sounds as though you are changing your mind. As though you’re fickle. Childish. What she doesn’t realise is that you’re repeating yourself. That it is all true. That it is all ungraspable.
That, like you, it’s all impossible to hold.
Time is a piece of string cut in the middle. She, and you, and him, are living in the space between sense. It is a place that can’t be framed or defined or painted. Every sentence she writes seems like an arrow snapped in half by the pull of a bow.
There is no painting. Or building. Or song. Or film.
Just
I know
from him,
and a final glimmer of colour from you, on a screen.