Tag Archives: creative writing

some days I forget to miss you

She looked at her computer screen, unable to believe that eleven years had already passed. July 2015. She remembered it too well, the moment the message came in that Jamie had passed away. Acute leukaemia. And now it was his birthday. He would have turned forty-five.

Some days she forgot to miss him. Other days the grief was scratching at her thoughts. There were songs forever attached to his memory. And there were conversations that were never forgotten.

Sometimes she thought that if Jamie were still here, her life would have been different. For the brief time they had known each other, he had been her best friend. Someone who had found a way past her walls.

It had started with writing and music. Hours spent exchanging messages, swapping pictures of attractive men, pouring their hearts out and plotting the next chapters of the stories they were writing. Sometimes the conversations were serious, sometimes they were anything but. Gradually, without either of them necessarily noticing, a friendship had grown into something she couldn’t imagine being without.

They had been remarkably alike. And strangely enough, many of the things she disliked about herself were the very things she loved about him. It was easy to love him. And she felt the same love being thrown back at her every day too.

Whenever she remembered Jamie, she also remembered Ricardo, the young man who had shared his life with him. She often thought about reaching out, but so much time had passed that it felt too late. Life hadn’t stood still for anyone. And she was afraid that getting in touch with Ricardo now might reopen old wounds. No, she knew better than to do that.

She tried to think of words that would do Jamie’s legacy justice. But she couldn’t think of any.

As if on cue, Erasure’s Always came on. It had been their song. Every day they had exchanged songs. Some landed more than others, but Always always did the job for both of them. She shook her head and surprised herself when she grinned.

2015 had been a pivotal year in her life. If only he could have been by her side when everything changed. But he wasn’t. And she missed him every day.

Sometimes she wondered if her inability to write novels anymore had something to do with the incredible loss she still felt. They had shared so much of their imaginary worlds, encouraged each other, followed characters through chapters and stories. And then, suddenly, there was nobody on the other end of those conversations anymore.

Then she caught herself. How selfish of her to make his life about her. How narrow of her to think only about her own changes. Surely his life would have been different now, at forty-five, too. Maybe he would be a dad, working his dream job as an expat in Spain or as a bestselling author. Or maybe he would still be in Manchester, touring clubs as a DJ.

Maybe nothing would be as it was now. Yes, today she really missed him a lot. Her friend Jamie.

The last cigarette

She sat on the steps outside the old factory building and took a deep drag of her cigarette. Her eyes closed as the familiar taste filled her mouth and then her lungs. She wasn’t addicted, but she loved smoking in the sun. Next to her, a journal lay open. A pen prevented the slight breeze from turning the pages. She looked at the blue smoke rising from the tip of the cigarette and felt the urge to make that moment something special, something poetic, a moment worthy of ink and paper. But as much as she liked smoking, she couldn’t find a way to make it glamorous, and the more she thought about it, the more she came to the conclusion that it was not worth mentioning at all. She took another drag and blew the smoke upwards, watching it fade into thin air. She had friends who vaped now. She had tried it too, but she hated the artificial taste it left in her mouth. There was no grit to it, and maybe no memories attached to a vape.

She ran a hand over her forehead, feeling the dry skin underneath her fingertips. The longer she sat there on the uncomfortable steps, the more irritated with herself she grew. She sighed deeply and rubbed the stub of the cigarette into the gravel next to her until only the filter was left. She put it in the pocket of her faux-leather jacket, where it joined another abandoned stub. She looked at her hands. They were hands just like everyone else’s. Ordinary. There was a mark of ink on her left index finger and another in her palm. She fished for a piece of gum in her tote bag, found one and pushed it into her mouth. She could stop smoking for months and even years, but chewing gum was a different story. That was her addiction. She took the journal and rested it on her knees. The pen replaced the cigarette between her right index and middle finger. She put the end between her lips and felt it with the tip of her tongue. Hard plastic.

She looked around her. Up the street she saw a lorry being unloaded and two burly men laughing together. Down the street she saw parked cars, grey and black and white. No colour. It would have made a desperate frame for a photograph. Nothing was inspiring enough to let her pen dance across the pages. Not even the yellow weeds pushing through patches of green in the gravel. She held the pen between her teeth and turned the pages of her journal, reading what she had written days or weeks before. She knew exactly which moment had inspired which words. Maybe it was the desolate surroundings. Maybe it was the silence in her head. Or maybe she had written all the words that had been destined for her.

Destiny. She wrote it in big letters, filling an entire page. Wisdom is knowing that destiny changes with every choice you make, she wrote underneath in almost illegible cursive.

She closed the journal, put it with the pen in her tote bag and got up. She walked down the steps and turned around to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Her car was parked close by. She looked up the street, where the two big men were still unloading boxes from a lorry. She looked down the street at the monochrome cars parked in a row. The sky was blue. The air was crisp, but the sun felt good on her skin. The chewing gum tasted minty in her mouth. She pushed her hair back and caught the lingering scent of her last cigarette. A man appeared in her memory. She lowered her head and smiled. He was long gone. It was time for her to go now too.