There was no name for what they were, John thought, because it was the spaces between their words, a series of things that did not surpass, perhaps, but existed outside of common language – a series of things tangible but indefinable, not pinned into place by nouns and adjectives and accusatory verbs.
It was the way that shoulders were for sleeping on and tea was handed with a small soft touch of fingers, a scrape that would barely be counted were it not accompanied by equally small and soft eye contact. It was the bump of hands when they were walking back from some blood-stained and silent location, a palpable warmness that jumped bodies like an electric shock, made the streetlights brighter, made stars in the night sky where there were none.
It was open smiles, it was the leftover scent on a borrowed sweater, it was comfort and not so much security because the idea of such a thing was enough to make John laugh, almost, but a presence by your side that was constant and steadfast yet prone to dash off at any time, providing you were tailing a few feet behind, mind caught in a whirl of confusion and adrenaline shaken up like the contents of a snow globe – might be dangerous.
It was all of those things, once. All of them and a constellation more, listed not on paper or print but in coils of brain and memory, a new one thrown up every day to block John's throat and make his hands shake as he poured the first strong tea of the day (the first was always the hardest - always the one he made too much of). All of those…things, wrapped up in profound and all-pervading missing that gnawed like ice at his bones.
He wondered, idly, carefully, like a person poking at an unhealed wound, why the missing, out of all of it, was the only part he could name.