.

leaves too, tarnishing his very own handiwork.

      Nobody ever tells you of these good-looking silhouettes because they have stood in their cast before. They relished in the same way you will but they cowered in the flood.

      They sunk with weakened limbs until they no longer knew of that initial burst and lay themselves down to surrender. You, however, will not allow yourself to be a casualty to love. You will grow stronger in it, if you try.

      It’s six minutes past midnight, Facebook has updated Messenger, video now available, you have no one to call.

      Soon, it’s twenty-one minutes past twelve and an unfamiliar noise rings through the hard plastic of your first laptop, it starts to screech. You look up and to the side, a rerun of the news now only important to your periphery.

      A boy. It’s a boy.

      A boy you’ve never met but whose life you know the lengths of. Holidays, parties, girlfriends, new friends, birthdays, likes, lunches – all arranged into bite-sized books you’ve read and torn pages from time and time again. The boy. The boy from the holidays and the parties, with the girlfriends and the new friends, he’s calling you.

      You answer.

      Spanking new anticipation twirling twines that tie knots in your chest, frayed ends tickling your stomach to stir hot queasy butterfly soup.

      ‘Hello.’ He says, monotone. Northern.

      Eyes thinning to an embarrassed sleepy squint.

      ‘Hey?’ You say, a question. Southern.

      Smile curving to bunch the bags from under your eyes to pillows.

      ‘Just wondered what your voice sounded like.’ He says, he smiles back.

      ‘Same. Now we know.’

      Lights dim in both screens, you dissolve into the silence of each other’s nights, minds reaching out to touch the other, tousle hair, feel skin. Talk. Talk. Laugh. Smile.

      Embarrassment has gone.

      It’s five thirty-six in the morning four years later. Lights still dim, faces still rounded in the glow of the laptop. Girlfriends once stalked are now ex-girlfriends discussed. Holidays, planned as fleeting dreams of train journeys across the country to finally meet. Likes, shared. Sometimes agreed.

      ‘Do we know, or at least think, that if you lived down the road from me we’d be in love?’ He wrote.

      ‘Yes.’ You reply.

      A life starts to lead along a parallel secret line, a life that’s yours and a line of fibre optics. Two years pass. You meet in a newsagent at a train station. He’s smaller than you thought. You’re fatter than he’d seen. Geography offers different greetings. Kiss, hug, release. You share pancakes but struggle to look at each other. You walk across Battersea Bridge, he lights a spliff, you sit facing away from each other and imagine you’re still just on the phone. Better.

      Three years later and it has never happened again. You never found out if he became the poster boy for postmen in Salford. You never got to tell him of the new bosses and the trips to America. You never got to tell him all the things he was right about. You never got to tell him how your heart held out, how it still occasionally chooses to hold out. How in a life lived on a parallel secret line you never unplugged the receiver. But now you do. Now you get to tell him somewhere he might find it and can only hope he does, before he finds someone else.

       to you

      This feels silly to write

      For in doing so

      The sentiment fractures

      And goes back full circle

      But I’ve kissed plenty of boys

      Most of them charming

      I’ve kissed plenty of boys

      And I’ve been on plenty of arms and

      I’ve loved plenty of boys

      And they’ve made me feel soft

      And I’ve seen plenty of boys

      And plenty I’ve lost

      I’ve had plenty of evenings

      In dimly lit bars

      And I’ve had plenty of fumbles

      In the backs of their cars

      I’ve written plenty of letters

      And received plenty of emails

      I’ve kissed plenty of boys

      And one or two females

      I’ve traced plenty of hips

      With eager touch

      And I’ve kissed plenty of lips

      That made me feel too much

      And in the plenty I’ve gathered

      I’ve garnered plenty of words

      But once put all together

      They don’t sound like firsts

      They all sort of sound similar

      As though each man wasn’t new

      Which is why it’s important to say

      Not everything I write is about you.

       she moves in her own way

      It was sticky in your apartment

      I stuck my eyes to every corner

      Where you’d stuck up old postcards

      An entire museum of your life and more a

      Window

      Framed the shrilling stuck-up summer silhouettes in the pub down below

      You stuck a scratched record on

      That played the once smooth staccato

      You poured me a glass of wine

      That slipped sticky to my sides

      That slipped your fingers across my thighs

      I felt stuck

      This time I promised myself I wasn’t giving up

      You said stick around

      And I cleared off the dark sediment red wine muck

      From my lips

      And kissed you in a way

      That begged to reverse ownership

      But instead it sellotaped my wrists

      Together tight around your hips

      Whilst my internal monologue screamed:

      You’re hopeless at this

      You don’t want to do this

      You always do this

      You don’t have to be this

      Person

      You don’t have to quench your thirst on

      Him

      Tell your body its anxiety isn’t a passion to burst on

      Him

      Don’t try and fill the void with empty consumption

      This moment in time that you’ll lie and say was sweet seduction

      Was another episode of you orchestrating a personality reduction

      Into