1. The Sweetest Strawberry…There’s something I’ve had to do for a while now.
I haven’t been writing. I can’t. This thing must be done but it will hurt. Why
must all I do be so painful? Why does life have me do this? I must do it though.
Am I the living proof for life’s need for balance, the Ying to your Yang? Is there
someone out there who has had all my filling? Why must I only ever get pastry?
I go out and pick the fruits. My hands cut and torn as I reach for the sweetest
blackberries. But I will never get to taste that sweetness, for all my treats are
tainted. So I make the sour, pushed aside things mine…and when I find the
sweetest strawberry I will give it to you.
Where Shall We Go Tonight? ... 4am I awake. My head, my hangover brings
me out of my time with you. You were sitting in the sunshine, I don’t know
where – all I can see is you. I slowly open my eyes, trembling with the sure
realisation that you will not be lying next to me. I thousand times before, and
more, I have woken to an empty bed. I want to sleep – I want to be with you
again.
I said that I couldn’t live without you, and indeed, there is some truth to the
melodrama. I live on, without you; but my eyes no longer have their glossy
excitement for the adventures that lie before me. For nothing seems to matter
anymore. The world, as it was, full of colour and light when I walked with you
that day through the Gardens is now two-tone, with an overshadowing
greyness.
Indeed, as I write these words I try to gather all the great things I am, have
done, or will one day do – in an attempt to pull together my greatest asset, in
a vain attempt to bargain all of it for just one more day with you. But I can’t.
I’m just a passenger, “I ride and I ride and I ride and I ride”.
I’m so tired. It always was out of my hands. I never picked you out! I was
oblivious to what was happening when I met you. I just remember, for days
afterwards, thinking of you. We merely met in a pub! And there I was at work,

2. days afterwards, miles away from the task at hand – and I couldn’t figure out
why (you had remained so strong).
I found myself walking through the park, hoping I’d bump into you, and there
you were, sitting under a tree. I could do nothing as I watched you crawl into
every part of my life, of me. And the sublime, the, oh so sweetness of just
sitting there under that tree with you.
I remember months after how you described that day, I nearly died, it was so
accurate it was as if you were in my mind – that instant of fear of being laid
out so open. You described how the world around us back dropped until there
was just you and me. The feeling of absolute serenity, of needing nothing. No
yearnings, no need for anything, except to remain in that moment forever. I
don’t even know if we were speaking, for there was no need.
I should have sat there, and just looked into your eyes for the rest of eternity.
I wish it could have been like that, just you and I. But it wasn’t, it couldn’t be.
Life, with all its social workings and disappointments could never have left us
in peace. Boyfriends, girlfriends – I merely wanted to be with you. But we sat
there again and again, looking into each other’s eyes (a secret smile never far
from your lips), with our respective ‘partners’ although the person in my arms
was no part of me. There was none left to give.
Maybe I should have just taken you up in my arms there and then and kissed
you? But I never did. A simple kiss never seemed to me enough, there was so
much more just in a look between us. All I know now is, as the years roll on,
and time robs you from me, slowly, piece by piece, leaving me, is that you
should know this: There is no colour left now – it all goes with you. It leaves
with you.
I barely remember anything anymore, only in my dreams can I see you; in the
daytime, only the nightmare of life afterwards is real. It gets darker and darker
as time flows on without you. I see the darkness pervading out of every part

3. of my soul, so I sleep, one more time, just one more time I fall into your slumber.
Where shall we go tonight?