I drank too much last night and now I have one of those low-lying headaches. You know the ones; you used to have them all the time — not really the throbbing kind, more like they’re fused to your skull, etched onto your soul. It was fun, though. You'd like him. We had pasta at that place down in Bloomsbury. He didn't even seem to mind when I cried over my bucatini because I can’t contain you and your evaporating form. He was nice but somehow, I don’t think I’ll hear back. It’s ok, like you always said, if a man can’t handle your tears, he’s not worth their salt, right?
They will be here soon, and you are still scattered everywhere. In movies, they somehow handle things like this with the right amount of sentimentality and haste. They can tearfully ponder, to the sound of gentle piano chords, over cardboard boxes filled with letters, Best Mum Ever coffee mugs, and children's height charts marked on door frames before the moving vans come in, and all that twee-drenched grief is wrapped up ready to go. But you left suddenly, food burning in the oven when they found you, the tissues you used to wipe your nose scrunched up inside your apron, words scribbled on a Post-It note meant for a coat pocket on the way to the supermarket — olive oil, lemons, garlic, your holy trinity. And you, spoon in hand, sat down on the sofa as if waiting for whatever afflicted you to pass so you could return to your sauce. You can’t soundtrack your way out of that tableau. Not in a good way, at least.
I'm out here packing by myself. My brother has decided this isn't for him, and Dad can't move much these days. I'm trying hard to make progress, but the slanted light coming in from the kitchen window keeps falling in places where my different-sized hands used to be — a biscuit jar, the crevice behind the microwave where I hid notes from the boys you didn't approve of, the medicine cabinet where you kept the pills I took when it all got too much. It's all getting in the way.
Outside the trees are swaying wildly, their branches casting shadows with pockets of brightness over our stained wooden floors. At this time of day, you’d be here, forever trying to get to a warm cup of tea as you ran around, putting out all of our fires. He’d be out, arriving later to an assortment of clean slates; soothed tantrums, finished homework, a warm meal, a smaller wife.
Good news, though. Your garden is finally a jungle, free from the constant grass cutting and bush pruning he meticulously undertook, and my brother carried on with after he left. You loved nothing more than tufts of rebellious grass growing between stones, all the wilderness sticking two fingers up to manicured nature. “There is no such thing as a weed,” you used to say, any subversive plant stretching beyond its reach, living outside the realms of its predestined path gaining your unspoken approval. These days they call it rewilding, and it’s supposed to be good for the planet, so I guess you were on to something.
All sorts of things are alive here that wouldn't have been, though, roaming this place freely, gloating like invaders claiming territory, marking it with trails and cobwebs. Spiders, ants, all the things you would never have allowed into this house, Mum. All sorts of things are alive except for you. You always joked that you would make excellent worm food, that they would grow fat and plump if they fed off your round thighs and the soft rolls of your stretch-marked stomach. Three rolls, you used to say, one per child, including her, who the sea swallowed when you closed your eyes for a brief second, your tired, heartbroken body battered by years of sleeplessness and stunted yearning. I wonder if they are carrying you in their bellies now as they find ways into our house through small cracks that you're not here to cover; if they are bringing you back inside, and if you are now crawling down there, where you complained you could never reach with your vacuum cleaner, through the gaps, under the floorboards, where we dropped our crumbs and our peas, our dried Play-Doh, and our tears. Two spiders are moving slowly now, their long legs climbing the fireplace where I cried and told you I was pregnant, and you held me and said, “you don't have to be,” the warm autumn light flooding our living room, enveloping us like communion.
This is no easy job, Mum. I've been coming here for weeks; I’m scratched all over, and my back hurts from hunching, sorting, and carrying you along in my empty arms. I've packed away the books, but how many million cards did you stash behind them on the bookshelves? Christmas, birthdays, condolences. He said you were unhinged when she died, and my six-year-old self pictured you like a door with loose bolts, threatening to fall on unsuspecting passersby. After a while he stopped talking but we could decipher him by the weight of his footsteps, hitting the wooden floors like tribal war drums, all the words he would not dare release for fear of engulfing us all in his grief-fueled rage, channeled to the back of his heels. When he finally left with a barrage of Jack-in-a-Box sentences shooting in all directions, I blamed you. I used the things he launched at you like a ventriloquist, not quite understanding the message of the master but dishing it out unaltered for maximum impact anyway. There is something about a seven-year-old barking “If you hadn't been so busy blaming us all for your misery and all the grey skies, your eyes would have been bloody open!” that is almost comical, quasi-laudable in its delivery. You didn't find it funny, though.
“You're a fucking little parrot, you are.”
There was no holding you back, Mum. You blanketed us constantly with your passion, moving up and down a scale that went from sun-drenched, all-encompassing love to unrestrained nastiness. I spent nearly a year grounded on and off in my room, missing Dad and hating my brother for using his 16 years to follow exit paths I couldn't.
Your room is a mess of stale, dusty air now, but your bed is made, covered in that bright sunny yellow spread with the fruits of where you grew up — oranges, lemons, pomegranates. God, how she loved to grab the fabric as if they were real. How you pretended, for ages, to try and pick up the fruit from the duvet creases under her little legs, and she giggled as you pulled and pulled. She stretched on top of you, her pudgy toddler hands trying to touch the sunlit flecks of dust spiraling upwards. They say dust is mostly composed of skin, the bits we shed in the constant renewal of our biggest organ. I wonder if we store messages in those particles; if there are coded lines in that skin we used to caress, moisturise, wash, cut and scrape; if there is still something left of us in these discarded pieces of primal garment. The months you spent in bed with never-ending headaches, your breath heavy with drink, you never wanted the curtains fully drawn so the light could come in and make the air glisten. Was she there in the dust? Are you there with her now, both feeding life with your stories, stored in your deceitfully lifeless bodies, making our garden apples sweeter? I know nothing made you sadder than unripe fruit.
That time when Dad bought you figs from the posh grocery store a few blocks up the road... You know, the one where they charged you a pint of unicorn tears for a loaf of bread. Two green figs, resting on scrunched silk paper. You couldn't get past the absurdity of a pair of fruits presented as rare gifts, as if some kind of apocalypse had taken over, turning your home country's staple into jeweled trophies. They felt hollow even before you opened them and when you finally did, they were pale pink and dry. No honeyed sheen, no rusty red colour, no evidence of the sun's hand. England could be so cruel, and he could be so clueless.
You talked about heaven, places above us in the atmosphere, way up past the clouds, but I can't find you there. You were never one to hover. You were earthy, always at ground level with your fingers running through our hair, your arms squeezing us until we couldn't breathe, your kisses finding us like tiny anchors whenever we felt ourselves drifting, afraid or unsure, your hands smacking us when we crossed your lines. And if it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, I wonder when that ends, and when will your absence stop impacting my cardiovascular anatomy. When will my heart give in, unable to hold any more expanding love and heartache, and explode into threads of flesh and blood, staining your floors, seeping under the cracks, meeting you down there in the bellies of worms and spiders.
Maybe I am just hungover.
I am knelt down by the open doors of your wardrobe, sorting through the you you were, and here they are; the beach pictures that used to sit in frames and that you left empty afterwards, but still on display all over the house; your self-punishment a permanent, vengeful installation of opaque cardboard windows, staring back at us mockingly, as if you wanted to show us that a past hidden from view could still rob us all of our futures. The photos feel sticky, green tinged by the passage of time and the less than ideal storing conditions of a shoebox hidden behind other shoeboxes filled with abandoned heels under dresses hanging meltingly, as if tired from a life of not being lived in, begging to be released from suspension, much like the body they belonged to.
And then I see it; what you really hid by keeping these faded timestamps of sandcastles, frothy surf, and sunny smiles from our view. You’re holding her, me and my brother on either side of your wet body. You stand, slim and golden skinned, next to him, tall and pink, both grinning for the camera, but your whereabouts are unknown, and you’re no longer rooted in that land you used to call home. I see you slowly leaving yourself, towards no man’s land; a perfect summer’s day at your childhood beach and yet, in each snap, you’re forever dying small deaths, hundreds of miles away, under his eternal rain. Who would want that staring back at them on the mantlepiece?
They are here now, Mum. I can see them walking down the road, the movers, and I haven't made a dent in this. I've been sending them away all week and I think I'll do it again today. They'll curse me, but I can't leave you just yet. Not now. Not like this. I need a lie down by the fireplace now the sun is coming in. We used to take naps here; a bunch of pillows and a pile of kids curled up on top of each other, nuzzling like milk drunk cats. Some memories drift or bend around the edges of our recollection, becoming whatever we need them to be, but others survive with the clarity of a moment just lived; Us, pillows, nuzzling like milk drunk cats. I'll place my head near the floorboards and let fresh tears flow down the gaps, moistening orphaned puzzle pieces, tinsel threads, and shattered glass, all gathered like fossils in this graveyard of family life for archaeologists to find one day. I’ll lie right here, listening to the wind howling down the fireplace, carrying with it the echoes of my father's laughter, the leftover particles of his resentment, the remnants of your broken heart, words and worlds lost in translation, and dreams of sunshine pierced by the dim lights of England.
London, December 2025
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