17

She spends the week apartment hunting in Dublin. She’s left it late; only a few weeks of the summer remain. You don’t talk about what happened, not really. But what more is to be said that your bodies did not? You do however, from a distance, fall into a rhythm like it is easy.

On her return, you’re waiting at the airport, sat atop the empty help desk. Legs swinging like a joyous child. She strides through the evening, and she waves. You wave back, your heart swelling at this small gesture.

You said to trust is not to fill time, but you would like to say to trust is to fill that time with each other. The heart does the same, in the immense darkness of the body, filling with blood, clenching it out, tight as stiff fist with nothing in hand. You fill time, clutching onto it as it leaves you. Clutching after each other in the moments you must separate. In between the weekly shops, the ­mind-­numbing television, cooking, cleaning, reading. Perched separately, but together, you often find yourself close to the balcony as it rains, heat breaking in thunder and lightning, like snare hits and ­hi-­hats.

You’re like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, you can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic strum of a double bass the inert grace she has been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music.