On that day she was asking me whether I would be true to her and I replied, ‘With all my heart.’ Had I been true to her?

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh no it is an ever fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken

It is the star to every wandering bark

Whose worth’s unknown altho’ his highth be taken.

When I was young I loved this sonnet. I thought a wandering bark was a young dog, rather as in Dylan Thomas’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.

I have been a wandering bark of unknown worth but I thought I was a safe ship for Louise. Then I threw her overboard.

‘Will you be true to me?’

‘With all my heart.’

I took her hand and put it underneath my T-shirt. She took my nipple and squeezed it between finger and thumb.

‘And with all your flesh?’

‘You’re hurting me Louise.’

Passion is not well bred. Her fingers bit their spot. She would have bound me to her with ropes and had us lie face to face unable to move but move on each other, unable to feel but feel each other. She would have deprived us of all senses bar the sense of touch and smell. In a blind, deaf and dumb world we could conclude our passion infinitely. To end would be to begin again. Only she, only me. She was jealous but so was I. She was brute with love but so was I. We were patient enough to count the hairs on each other’s heads, too impatient to get undressed. Neither of us had the upper hand, we wore matching wounds. She was my twin and I lost her. Skin is waterproof but my skin was not waterproof against Louise. She flooded me and she has not drained away. I am still wading through her, she beats upon my doors and threatens my innermost safety. I have no gondola at the gate and the tide is still rising. Swim for it, don’t be afraid. I am afraid. Is this her revenge?

‘I will never let you go.’

I went straight to my flat. I didn’t expect to find Louise there and yet there were signs of her occupation, some clothes, books, the coffee she liked. Sniffing the coffee told me that she hadn’t been there for some time, the beans had gone stale and she would never permit that. I picked up a sweater of hers and buried my face in it. Very faintly, her perfume.

I was strangely elated to be in my own home. Why are human beings so contradictory? This was the site of sorrow and separation, a place of mourning, but with the sun coming through the windows and the garden full of roses I felt hopeful again. We had been happy here too and some of that happiness had soaked the walls and patterned the furniture.