Everything in its right place

I walk the streets. I am on my way home. Radiohead’s Lp ‘Kid A’ plays out and the chill of Autumn is felt. This chill is bearable, I am happy that it is not yet Winter. Skipping the main street with its 5pm traffic and noise, I walk down back lanes and alleys. Apartments tower above and to the sides, I navigate the broken bottles. God this is a bleak place. Not surprisingly, thoughts of ‘us’ fill my head, and ‘Everything in its right place’ fills my ears. Things suddenly make sense. I write in my journal….

Extracts from an unsent letter to my lover dated April 2011

“I realised, surrounded by this bleakness, the concrete lanes strewn with broken glass, boxed apartments stacked high and wide…Frightened people within the boxes look out expectantly as if something is going to happen, they wait for some dramatic and beautiful change, but it never comes… the knowledge seems to creep up on them, creep up on all of us- ‘this is it’…. Gone is expectation, in its place, unhappiness. It makes perfect sense, this was all that could follow, this is what was meant to be and is…everything is in its right place.”

“We argue again. I make my point like a crazy European, righteous, loud and angry. You brood silently. Even now, minutes later, I forget what we argued about, it’s never about factual things, strange isn’t it? Perhaps not, for I have come to realise that there is no room for ‘truth’ in our relationship. How can there be?, we are based on a lie. He thinks you are at work, not here with me. He thinks you are the faithful and monogamous partner, but here we are again, fucking. He doesn’t even know I exist and I love him for that. I could not stand to face him and take responsibility for my part in this. I am as much a coward as you are, as much a traitor…”

“I think about the unhappiness that follows. Isn’t that what comes after deceit? I deluded myself for so long that we were in love, how childish of me. How blind and desperate. All you ever gave me were the scraps that He would not notice gone. I can’t help but think that everything is in its right place. I got what I asked for. I sit in the lane, on a plastic milk-crate amongst the debris. Staring up at the boxes filled with frightened people, I snarl at them ‘what did you expect?!!’ My voice echo’s off the concrete. There is no response, except for the movement of curtains being drawn.”