Many years later, during the time that marked the social media pandemic, I saw a picture of Kage with the girl he had married. He’d lost a lot of weight, chiselled out, become an artist famous amongst those who didn’t like famous artists. She looked like a sculpture made of milk and china, elfin and fragile, just about the loveliest girl you ever saw.

April

July 2008

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‘Mr D!’

‘Hey, you! How are you?’

‘Heartbroken and confused. You?’

‘Nowhere near as excitingly fraught as you, it seems. What’s going on?’

It was part nervous babbling, part uncontrollable need to filter my feelings through his perspective (they came out looking very different on the other side). I found myself telling him about Kage, the fest and the medal and the songs and everything I’d foolishly thought they meant.

I could hear him laughing midway through it, so I tried to wrap it up briskly, like a grown-up.

‘So yeah, just, you know, the heartbreak of first love and all that. I’m such a goddamn cliché. Terrible, isn’t it?’

‘Not nearly as terrible as affecting a blasé pretentiousness, kid. Don’t do that.’

I shrugged at no one. ‘It hurt. What else am I supposed to do.’

He let out a last chuckle. ‘There, there, come now. I’m sorry for teasing. But that wasn’t love. That was a first crush. Sometimes the two are hard to distinguish from each other. Know this—when you do fall in love, it will blow your bones hollow.’

Sharp bumps prickled at my arms and legs. ‘Have you ever been in love?’

‘The great thing about first crushes, though, is that they prime you with torrents of inspiration. Let’s have a gander at the brutalized poetry, shall we?’

‘What? No! I didn’t write any brutalized poetry. What kind of sap do you take me for?’

‘Don’t you lie to me.’

I wasn’t, not exactly. I’d written plenty of brutalized poetry, but none of it had been about Kage.

‘Fine, fine. I—do you want me to send you one?’

‘Mm, why don’t you read it out to me?’

Caught between an intense shyness and not wanting to appear churlish, I jumped into the water.

‘Okay.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Should I start?’

‘Please.’

‘So when he does leave,
a deliberate movement he isn’t aware of,
a part of me will break
into pieces; shiny, torn
different, varied
a rainbow of tears and screaming
agonizing never leaving
scars brutal and red and sprinkled with blue
I think they are what they seem
taken from me
forced from the loss of Safe.
I am not safe
and it’s all within me;
locked away, unexpressed,
except here, on this page
would there were bloodstains
strong enough to be strong enough.’

Splash.

‘Hm. You, like me, have the very bad habit of flirting with cliché.’

I sank.