The Grief Journal of Gemma Jones Part 1

I am laying on the couch clad in your faded grey T and short shorts (mine of course) reading Dante's Inferno, or at least trying to. The doorbell rings and I sluggishly get up from my divine reading and slumber up the three tiny stairs that lead up to the foyer. You look me up and down clad in your tailored suit, looking like a bad man.

"I see someone's taking the day off..." You remark, giving me the once over.

"Well we can't all be arseholes." I can see you want to kiss me right  then, I can almost feel it,  I notice that your hand is behind you back.

"Whatchu got there?" I say, stepping away from the door to let you in. You produce a beautiful array of wild ones and beam at me.

"Picked them all out myself". Your face is full of light.

You begin to explain the meaning of all f them and gesture with your hands like words cant contain what you need them to. It was always the weird thing about you, a delicate thing about you whenever you expressed yourself using your hands and I wondered how hard it must have been for a man born of your time to have had to contain all those joyful descriptions. To me you had always been a soft giant of sorts, as ferocious as a lion and as gentle as can be, and that is what mattered after all.

I take them and put them up in a vase with water as I listen to you. The house is empty, the way I like it and the garden beckons us. We move to the kitchen where I make us some lemonade, fresh squuezed from the tree outside. The day is blue and yellow and calm.

"Its peaceful here.." You cut off your words and I know whats coming next.

"Don't."

Its only been what seems like a few centuries and even the thought of it pulls me away, threatens my existence. We abide in silence for a moment until I can see the sky again.

"Books going well. Five good pages today...strewn amongst the tears."

You look away.

"That's good to hear"

You stare at your watch as a gesture of defeat. I am filled with longing. This was not how it was supposed to be like. I was not supposed to be cooped up in a giant mansion, away from home, away from you. Away...from the memories. I almost touch you then but I know that all it will do is burn me up and eat mealive and I will want it so badly that I wont be able to stop. I wont be able to stop crying, or bleeding or dying and this quiet little world with its vast sky, this will all disappear. That person laying on the couch grasping at philosphies in poetry, that will all disaapear and this wave of the worst possible things, it will break free and I fear take my soul my soul along with it.

"Let me walk you out...time to get back to it in any event before it all scampers away from me."

Peace returns once more as we take what seems like an unnecessarily long walk to the door. Its been 2 weeks since your last visit. Already I feel like I am intoxicated by you. She is in your voice, your phantom touch. Even here. I keep thinking how I shouldnt see you again but can't quite bring myself to say it to your face. I think its safer to just move again. Perhaps out of the country where none of you can find me and never have to remember. Never have to see that same light in your eyes. Never have to...

You turn before you go, pleading with your eyes.

"Well...see ya."

Better to get these things done and over with. I watch you drive away before making the call.

" Hi John. Its me. I think I need a ittle change of climate for a while, can you organize a house somewhere warm and far away from here. Rather make it Rome, it will good preparation for me to try and wrap myself around my new project"

He asks no questions and a week later I leave you behind, the clouds and the green little trees and the suffering. I thought you would have stopped coming after our divorce went through , but you just kept on coming with  that relentless hope in your eyes. I dont know how you managed to have that despite looking at the unsurmountable. I could never replace what you lost and nor could you. It just wasn't enough in the end and while I am young and able, all I want to do is rock your your T-shirt and my short shorts and imagine that it all never happened. That we never got married, that I never fell pregnant...

I am getting all queezy again from the flight. I imagine it crashing with a liitle too much enthusiam that I know for a fact that it wont. I almost cannot wait to devote myself solely to my next book. Find a new charity case to give the procceds to. Try sending it all to you again. Its a pretty high wall I set, I cant see where it ends. The clouds go drifting by like candy floss in the sky and I fall asleep and dream of that hope in your eyes.