I never spent longer listening to a heartbeat, a shallow breath. The chair was uncomfortable; they couldn’t get me a better one. The best they could do was a bedside table, large enough to fit the books.

The books, a full game of solitaire when I got bored. It would be big enough to fit a vinyl record player if I put everything else on the floor. Play some music for a while, drown out the implicit hums. The dings, the chatters. The pulses. But then I wouldn’t hear the heartbeat. Wouldn’t hear the breaths.

I’d pick up a book. ‘Oh, I remember this one.’ I remember them all now. I’d flip to the first page, read it out. Then the second, then the third. The first time I’d read them all quickly, in haste, trying to reach the end, but I learnt to savour those pages. I’d read them slowly, more slowly than I’d ever read anything before. I’d savour the vapid characters, the cliche quips, the sloppy prose. Never before had I gotten so much from so few words, drained every syllable of meaning, of memory. They told a different story from the one on the pages. There were never enough books to keep me going.

In the silence left after the pages I found time to think, and to remember. I wondered about all the times I’d forgotten, trying my damndest to find them again. ‘They must have been bad.’ I knew that, but what did it matter now? They were, and that was that. Soon, they’d be all there was. Soon, they could never again be forgotten. I’d have to cling to them, drain them as I did the books, find their every meaning. Meanings I’d never found before, and ones I’d misplaced for making a mess of the whole thing.

I sat then in that mess. I yearned for it. What a wonderful, delightful mess. How it tore me apart, placing my every limb on the walls of that room. I thought it had torn me apart before, but now that trembling malady felt like a haven to find solace in. A pain lesser than this one. A lodestone to guide me back to what was known.

I’d convinced myself so long ago that it was all just pain. A blinding comfort, one to make things simpler. A narrative. Simple words put to simple times put to simple faces. Simple actions, right and wrong. Pain and pleasure, good and bad. Those faces weren’t so simple now. They were old and worn. They bore the engravings of their pleasure and their pain. The actions remained unchanged, they always would. They would preserve their reality, as would that moment. Reality didn’t seem to care about right and wrong. Simple words didn’t stick to it. There was only one I could think of that could do it any justice at all. ‘Mess.’

‘They didn’t need to make it a funny line like that.’ They could have made it a dot, or a colour, but they made it a line. Up and down. Up, and down. As though both were the same. As though the line could go up, and stay there. There was only one place the line could go and stay. Up, and down. Up, and down.

I stopped caring about the time off work after long enough. They said there was only so much left, I thought I’d wait it out. Watching the living as though I were watching a pulsing organ. Sitting there in my uncomfortable chair, useless as a bedside table, with about as much to say. Helplessly quiet, as though words could ever do a thing anyway. Not mine, not anyone else’s. They never had much weight before. They didn’t now. Yet I listened for the breath as though it could deliver them, to the heartbeat as though it had one more derisive remark to utter, another disdainful scowl. I spent my last hours there, in that room. My last hours with you.

I was there when it happened, too. The clock ticked over. I thought I’d see it, at least be there for that. I was placing a six of diamonds in a game of solitaire. Or maybe a five of clubs, or jack of hearts. I don’t know, because I don’t know when it happened. I know the nurses came in, taking my attention away from the game. I saw it then. The line had gone flat. I looked over at you and you were lying just like you had before, except maybe a little more still. Nothing else had changed. Not inside, not out. You were still there. I was as I had been all those final days, final years. I still hadn’t found any more words to say.

30.VIII.2024