Full Circle

Connections are all we have: I learnt that in my early days when living in a single room, listening to the radio while dreaming of a social life I lacked the money to explore.

You understand everything but life!”  my wife once said but now she’s gone: I find it hard to say she’s died. We met at university, where I was gorging on the classics were wisdom shares it’s anecdotes.  The library was my home and she, the librarian, became my friend and then my wife. She had told me off for sneaking a sandwich in where food was not allowed and then was drawn into a conversation with me by, she later said  “My general oddness!”

Don’t look for praise from those you treasure; it often comes as an afterthought,  but her eyes could never hide her love: in them I found my sanctuary

We had a daughter, called Felicity who grew into a lover of people and animals but then she moved to America, keeping house for her husband and a son I have never seen. Distance is implacable but still we sometimes chat by phone.

Being the man I am, I suffered a financial calamity and was forced to move to a place I did not know but with lodgings I could just afford.

I became that man you do not know, who walks the same streets every day, and drinks coffee in cafes he cannot name, sharing thoughts with the daily news, but each breath I take I think of her, scolding me from dawn to dusk, and hugging me like no one else, as I rest here, dreaming of a social life I lack the money to explore.

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