Adeline

Adeline 

You are so strange

but so beautiful

as you tiptoe onto the kitchen sink to open your lopsided North West London window

that opens into the grey sky above as the sun sets behind the clouds

and the smoke from your cigarette seeps into your flat

blending in with your £450 candle which smells of warm August leaves burning and blends

with cumin spices from the vegetables that you cook -

and casually you smile as you mention your millionaire friend who gifted it to you

and told you to not blow it out but to cover it with a plate as it’ll last longer that way.

You stir the peppers and search the bowl for spices listing them off one by one, this one will do, no that one’s gone off - something in the way you interrupt me mid-sentence charms me when it should repel, or rather annoy.

Maybe it’s that five years have passed, but each odd thing that comes out of your mouth or the mutterings you make to yourself as you wonder out of the room into your corridor into the bathroom makes me wonder what the inside of your mind is like

And how terrifying, but how unique. What was it you were looking for?

How wonderful it is to see you smile,

as blue shadows under your eyes add time to that young face of 23, where life should pulse and scream.

But you embrace each day and find beauty in the little things.

Like that man who left some marks on your neck that you pretend to hide as you unclip your carefully arranged strawberry blonde hair, temporarily dyed, released from its pastel pink grip – Primark you announce, proudly common whilst making it look like Dior.

Matters of the heart bounced around the room like a tidy game of tennis, you say you love the light-hearted tone of our philosophy as I say I don’t believe that people can fall out of love.

You peel the garlic on top of a portable I-phone charger, next to an unused chopping board. The tomatoes bubble and the onions seep into the room – is it those that make you cry?

The stew is under your control, it relaxes you as you sift through those spices in their bowl and mutter yet again as I recall my first impressions of heartbreak, of which you ask.

The paprika has expired but you sprinkle more cumin

as you talk of how you know you’re like your mother - stubborn, emotional, distraught yet sharp-witted, jokes at a party – impressions of a 12-year-old, the pictures on your windowsill that haunt.

A life of loveless ties, you paint, but how much truth are in the words you so carefully choose and weave into metaphors like the orchids arranged so recklessly in your vase on that table by the empty sofa.

You slide into your marble seat, two plates, body in abandon, paper-thin as you sink into the neck of your cashmere jumper that swallows you whole, puffing away at a cigarette bud.

The smell you cannot stand and you tiptoe onto the dining table to open the second lopsided North West London window and it is now pitch black and the candle, orange, fills the room with warmth as you so coolly breathe out.

How nice it is to see you again Adeline.