Up in the Shropshire hills, the rain and gusts lick on the car roof, like they are trying to open a can made of something soft, inedible. It isn’t quite time yet, not for me – or someone like me – who has nowhere to go, or everywhere to be.
I didn’t sleep that night, still it is good that the spots on my back have disappeared now. He must have noticed, must have remembered. And silence can’t put its weight on me anymore; his silence, the calm of water dripping, the absolute stillness of white rose lights in the back of the car.
As my hands turn the final page of the book at 1am, I remember: The first man I made love with was an Indian bridge engineer, and although I had not thought of this simple fact again after I left India fourteen years ago, it seems to have set rather a precedence for connections throughout my life thus far.
Sometimes I contemplate burning emotional bridges and use the remains to furniture my ego house, dramatic interior design très chic. Other times I allow bridges to collapse under their own weight, naturally, like the old merchant houses stretching across the Seine, never built to outlive their inhabitants.
Just for this last unicorn to wonder if there really is the bridge that is buzzing with life, vibrating, eminently developed and yet flexible – so not to subside – through crafted intellect and observation, as well as furnitured with the strangest curiosities, giving me a home that I always find interesting and comfortable enough to return to as I live a life of wandering between two sides.