The light we see

Six days scratching my palms, and licking the roof of my mouth, and peeling mould from the plasterboard behind my bathroom sink, and thinking of back when Annie used to love me.

I’m so dry. My house is so dry. I pull open the cupboard next to the pantry, and there’s one empty glass bottle of rum which, six days ago, Annie poured into the bath and dared me to bathe in. I’m dry enough to break the glass over my head and swallow the shards.

I call Lisa instead, and we head out to the offie together, then sit by the canal and pop our Made in China Prosecco and clink our bottles as if we’re best friends.

We’re at the odd end of Hackney, where the bank we’re sitting cross-legged on is lined with warehouse pubs, but across the canal there’s wetland grass that jiggles and shimmies for miles in the sunlight.

Lisa says, Six days is a long time, but imagine six days in Benidorm.

Imagine six days of listening to Annie.

Christ. Someone call rehab.

By the time two more bottles arrive, delivered canal-side by a guy on a bicycle, Lisa’s head is leaning against mine, and the sun is setting over the marshes. We don’t ting-ting, but clank our bottles and swallow the fizz.

You know it’s funny, I say. I get nervous because I notice I’m not scratching my palms right now, but now I’ve noticed I’m not scratching them, I feel like I should scratch them.

Lisa takes my fucked-up palms and runs her finger along my lifelines and says, They look okay to me.

Maybe they are, I say. But I think about them a lot. When I die and get born again, I want to be an animal without palms.

What would you choose?

Not a primate. I think a bird, something that can fly, but nothing spectacular like an eagle. I don’t have that in me. Imagine being insignificant, but high enough to see the world from a distance. I don’t need to say anything. I’m just there.

I’d still fly close, Lisa says. What’s life without a little risk?

Nah. I’d stay up there forever, until the wind takes me and I’m blown into my next reincarnation. What would you be?

I’d like to be still. Sorry, no wind for me. A sea sponge, Lisa says. I can sway at the bottom of the sea and do nothing but reminisce. I think I’d like to feel the light every morning, glittering all the way up there. I’d imagine what the rest of it looks like. Then I’d reminisce.

That sounds awful, I say.

If we do reincarnate, I’d think it’s more useful than not.

Lisa takes my palms again and squeezes. She points into the marshes, and right in front of the sun there are two birds swooping from the sky beneath the horizon, then leaping back up as if they’re touching the sun.

Are they you?

That depends. What kind of birds are they? I say.

Something dumb like you are, I guess. Chaffinches?

Alright, sponge girl. I slur to Lisa that I love her, and Lisa slurs that she loves me too. Our fingers tighten and our lips move close enough to touch, but both of us look at the birds.

Imagine it is you, Lisa says.

Maybe it is. I’m in the sky, and you’re in the sea, and we never know each other.

But isn’t it wonderful to have an idea of something that could be better? Lisa says.

Six years later, Lisa is there in the garden, and the sun is out. There’s a picnic bench exactly how I used to want it with chipped wood and worn varnish. The lawn’s getting unruly, with wispy grass and puffy seeds floating everywhere, but all the flowers unfold into the sky.

Lisa runs a finger along her palm. Her eyes move from her glass of fresh lemonade to the picket fence, where there’s a birdhouse hanging next to the ivy. She can’t really see inside, but there’s something there. She can hear it tweet and scuffle.

She remembers the birds on the horizon at dusk, and everything remains so still and so beautiful.