Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (23) - Flipbook - Page 74
FIRST TIME SINCE THE LAST TIME
by Michael Murphy
More prayer than song, more plea than prayer – an a cappella shrill thrust headlong into
the night. Before the light of day, a bird in Brixton falls sharply silent, its lungs unheeded burst
asunder.
On the cusp of sleep, Lena listens. Palm cradling cheek, thumb tucked behind lobe, the back
of her hand resting gently on the pillow. She trains her ear and whispers,
“It’s not a nightingale.”
Lena will wake before the day that is the night. She’ll stir soup on the hob and sing Polish
lullabies. The twist of the doorknob a needle-across-vinyl shriek. And he’ll smell. Filthy and
fertile. Like rain burning off a dirty street.
Khalid will ditch the hi-viz, smile and kiss her naked nape. Crack wise. Warm his chords with
Kronenbourg. He’ll audition his voices; the lover, the rake, the paranoid, the leave me the fuck
alone. She’ll sip chamomile as he pulls himself apart on the lino. Limbs flailing. Best not to
touch. Just leave him be. Sometimes Earl Grey.
Lena knows. Ritual is a blanket that keeps you warm. A flammable blanket that keeps you
warm.
Pre-dawn birdsong will lift Khalid from the kitchen floor. Unravel his contortions, cradle him,
carry his broken body upward to be laid prone by Lena. It is only then that she’ll find sleep.
She’ll fall fast in the knowing that this is not the night that creaking stairs go silent. When it
comes – when day breaks without the anxious dark of shuffling footfall – she will whistle softly
in bed and wait. She will whistle and wait. She will whistle as morning turns to afternoon and
afternoon to night. She will whistle until the rush of wind through her upturned tongue
intertwines with the robin’s winter plea.
Lena isn’t wrong. She struggles with conjugation. Khalid isn’t here, of course. But, he’s here,
of course. Khalid is not here. He will be. Here. Soon Khalid will be here.
He’d be happy with chicken from a tin. Prefer it, even. To carve flesh from carcass, to roll it
between fingers, to let her face linger over a steam of broth and bone is her shy subterfuge.
A pink blade had for nothing at Oxfam. Everyone knows you don’t butcher with ceramic. Lena
knows. She carves and picks. And picks. Carves and picks and eats. Khalid won’t eat dark
meat.
She swallows the moist bits and a rosy chip of razor. Sets it on its course. A spanner in the
terminal tick tock. Having a thing inside you that’s not you. Deciding. The morning may come
or a tug of the moon, a sharp song and sleep.
“It would’ve killed you,” Khalid had said. It would have. Such certainty. An anchor stitch that
keeps us bound to the ground. That keeps innards in and the outer out. Knowing is not
knowing. The stich will pop. The stars will fall. Gravity’s grip will loosen, and we’ll be set adrift
in a never-ending night. Soup at a simmer, Lena makes her way upstairs.
Next to the dresser, the 35 flashes fluorescent outside the bedroom window. Twelve-minute
intervals. The upper deck is never empty. Hoodie, hoodie, hijab. Headphones on. Eyes low.
Cameos. Rolling, rolling by.
Khalid’s at the Junction. It beats and beats and pumps people into the streets along red-bus
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