Common Feeling - 03.05.25

It is 2:36am on a bank holiday Friday. I just stepped in from work at --- on --- Road. I walked all the way home without putting my headphones on, stopping by the 24-hour Budgens on the way for fruit to eat. I am sat on my bed now, in silence, a welcome contrast from the reams of city sound, and I am wearing nothing. I love the evening derig of my outfit: I unsheathe my hair from its head band, a cool makeup wipe grazes my face, and I unplug the golden hoops from my earlobe with an ached sense of release as the piercing lets go and the jewelry slides free. I always take all my clothes off to leave them on the ground where they were removed, and I always frown on this in the morning. I always end up sitting on my bed, naked, all wrapped in the whir of the electric heater that works so hard at my feet every day. I do not need it to be on. In April even a couple thin layers would be enough to keep me warm. But I appreciate its company, so it stays singing on the ground in one flat note, so I at least have one voice to listen to.

I am thinking of --- again. While I sit tailorwise, eating on my bed, no music or TV show feels desirable. When he is on my mind, indulging in the thought of him is more enriching than any show. Besides, the noise he makes in my head rings so fully that if I tried to watch anything, I would only be hearing his voice in the canned laughter and the foley would be all his own: his footsteps, bike revs, tea-sips and door slams. My laptop screen would become another place where I wait like a wet-eyed puppy for him to make an entrance, and 2:36am on a bank holiday Friday would become another time I settle into a dull knowing that he is not coming.

I thought I had clawed my way out of this feeling already, but the loose foothold was a drunken night alone in his room after months of estrangement, and as soon as I leaned into it, I fell right back to the bottom of the hole. He had loved me through every hour I was there, and he only withdrew from my kiss to tell it to me while looking at my eyes, just enough distance between us to let the words sweeten as they reached me. We loved all night in frenzied revolutions of giving all of ourselves and wanting all of each other. At one point, a mirror broke with the force of it all when we found ourselves leaning against it somewhere in the night. He told me how he couldn’t be with others, and I really do believe him because sex like that can only be fueled by real love. But in the days following, he was not effortful in seeing me again. When I extended a break in the “will-they-won’t-they” script to solicit his real feelings, he pointed again to that same brick wall we always find ourselves slamming into: he can not be with someone so ill.

I do not want to sleep, but there is nothing in staying up until dawn. That dull knowing would see me all the way to morning and when dawn comes, the only beauty I could find in it would be a comparison to the colour of his golden hair.