stone

I notice everything you do with the calculation of someone who has died and is looking down at their body on a bed.

With a fondness, an interest, an exact precision. I am lying on our sofa under a sleeping bag and the television is blaring. I find it easier to be under the covers; my head mostly facing the wall. Afternoon slips into evening - unnoticed.

This morning I stumbled into the house, and you weren't in, thank God. I ran to the shower and wet my soul until it was clean. I made some toast, brushed my teeth and jumped into bed.

This morning I slept with someone else. I will not be clean for a while.

”””””””””””””””””””””””””

You are sitting close to me in the room upstairs, where the wallpaper runs away from the walls, and the corners are slightly damp.

I am thinking of how I was devoured last night by my tall, icy-eyed lover. How his fingers crept along my body in a measured way. If you heard my thoughts you would double over.

I make my mind blank and dark. I worry that you can see the jumble of letters in my head that make up the words: I fucked someone else.

You are fiddling with a roll-up reading The Times glancing at a war film. You catch my eye, you don't smile as you usually would. I am afraid that you know.

Convinced, each time you move, that you will let me know that you noticed: someone else's breath on my neck, fingermarks on my breasts, a different smell, you know, down there.

You are rolling your feet around your ankles, this should be something I love about you. Isn't that what lovers do? Get gooey about the way their partner eats a Twix, twiddles with their hair, laughs.

But I am indifferent to the circling of your toes and the fleshy jowls of your face.

The stone, in me, rolls from side-to-side.

Later, you are behind me. Your right hand gripping my neck more tightly than I am used to, and my heart is fast. My heart is slow.

"So what's Emma's house like. You were there last night?"

I have not been to Emma's house, not last night. I do not know whether it is a bungalow, a terrace ” or whether it exists at all.

"It's nice," I whisper.

Dark, cracked curtains rest on my eyeballs. I want you to hear the resistance in my voice so I can pour out my blackness - like a split pea.

"Uh-huh, where is it?" Your roll-up breath is near my neck.

"Streatham," The words slip out of my mouth quickly, like sick.

"Streatham?" you repeat.

"Yeah, Streatham, South London."

"Oh, OK. We went there once, remember? John's birthday party."

I choose not to answer you. If you had asked me whether I had got the train or tube, and how long it took, we would both be living a new life. Our future partners, our careers, our history etched on a new stone.

"Are you hungry, Sweet?" you ask. You are looking at me and the TV at the same time.

You stroke my cheek lightly, 'Hmmm?'

"No,"I say.

Please leave me alone. Let me swim in my after-shock. I can't look at you.

Ten minutes later you return.

"Where did you get those? Where did you buy those?" you say.

"Buy what?"

"Those." You point at the condoms you have thrown on the ground.

I don't remember buying those but then I don't remember anything about last night.

I jump an abyss in my mind and land the other side hanging with my teeth.

"I don't know. They must be old?," I say.

You pull down the sleeves of your jumper and walk out. The room is in darkness, curtains drawn from the dusk outside. My skin is damp but you have not noticed.

Later, in bed, you seem content. The news flickers by on the TV, your eyes scroll up and down with latest reports. The World Trade Centre has fallen down; selfishly I think of my fidelity, of our empire of trust, and how it lays fallen and besieged changing the path before it.

Next day in the office, the night I had with someone who is not you is easing from memory. The stamp of essence remains but I forget his voice, his walk, the taste of his tongue. My boss is belligerent as usual - life continues - it is not the big changes that make every day different. I think of the way I held your thighs last night.

The phone bleeps. It's you on the line (I wonder if you have heard something in the hours since we parted this morning).

'Hi Sweet' you say.

The more saccharine you are, the more you push me away.

But then I remember Sunday morning, hung-over, with the gentleman whose name I don't remember, the violation I did not realise was a violation until Sunday evening - when I saw you, when the darkness swallowed me and the stone began to swing pendulously, brushing me where the blackness fed.

I could have changed the course of your life, but I didn't. Does that mean I love you? Does that mean I love you?