Reset. Today I felt a chapter close, felt the thud of the cover closing over me. Realised I am in a different story now.
I’m overwhelmed. My nerves have been shot through with the stress of a job I have not enjoyed for far too long, sitting in a pool of grief watching my fingers prune, and still my brain thought ‘I am not ready to go.’
I will never be ready to leave. I love London. I love London so much. I have always wanted to live here, grew up dreaming of it. And of taking the Tube to work, of walking down Brick Lane and ogling the graffiti, of wandering into galleries that were open to the world, of traipsing by the Thames in the summer, the air hot and delicious, the murky water illuminated by the golden hour, the busker by the Tate casting a spell over the semicircle of people clustered around them, the wind blowing over the water crossing the Millennium Bridge, the chip shops, the Bengali men entreating you to enter their curry houses, napkins folded into little peacocks, the fountains at Trafalgar square, the long stretch of Regent Street filled with Palestinian flags and placards and people, the air full of chants, the tiny coffee shops with extortionate prices, the poetry nights, the poetry nights, the warehouse parties, the house parties, the underground bars, favorite old dive bar we sat after a fundraiser drinking until 2am gentrified now, too clean, no sticky velvet booths anymore, flower market on Sundays, friend at the top of the road moved away, and this, my flat above the Thames, this quiet place where the light comes in through the bedroom window in the morning, the mirror which I put up with a friend in exchange for a home cooked meal, the sofa we sprawled out on, table on which we ate many elaborate meals together, flowers always in the vase, room full of bodies, who will ever know but the record grooves etched into my body, now, this body that is a library of this place as it was for me and for us? I hope you know how much I loved you, how much I love you still, how you will become a record I pick up and play when I am old and feeling like I want to remember. How you are always playing as I live and breathe, the player of my body spinning, and you are my artistry and my voice and my phrasing, my outlook and my humour and my blood, my song.