Carbon Monoxide

by abstraction

Time sometimes flows backwards between your mouths and the past will slip out, unbidden, but it changes nothing. Ten, Jack.

Carbon Monoxide
abstraction

(BBC owns everything but the words).

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You will have a day each year. Wednesdays, normally, winter mostly. The quiet hum of him will suffuse your skin and you will remember the soft scratch of wool or fleece against your neck, a collar protecting you from the cold.

You will think the cold is all you need protection from. (A mistake.)

This day, your day, is always quiet and long, and in the growing years you will remember him smelling like dead flowers and each step he takes leaves behind the scent of gardens at dusk and lukewarm tea and unfulfilled wishes.

These days, your days, are never rushed, always a subdued storm clouding the horizon but the thunder never breaks against your backs. Time sometimes flows backwards between your mouths and the past will slip out, unbidden, but it changes nothing.

Some days, your days, he has changed, and the dark dash of brown hair will melt into a softer chocolate. One day, on your day, it is golden and powder soft.

The last day, your last day, together, you will never forget, because in your aching memories it always ends the same, a sharp study in the contrasts of red.