Page 67 of Love and Other Paradoxes

a butterfly,

a hurricane,

a traveller with her mother’s eyes

who danced through years

like they were moments,

unwound the springs

of time itself

to save the one she loved.

We are more than what made us,

and our paths through time

are never straight lines.

The footprints you leave

will stay,

even if you unmake

the one who made them.

Through all my broken, overwritten days,

I will remember:

not who you were meant to be,

but you, as you are,

on a rain-swept beach,

shivering, laughing, alive.

He folded the paper in half. On the outside, he wrote her name.

He walked: one last, agonising walk through the cold to the long, straight road that led from the university out to reality. The window of the café was empty. A light was on in the back; through a half-open door, he caught a glimpse of Esi moving. He hovered, torn by the compulsion to talk to her. But the poem was better than he was: he didn’t want to hobble it with his embarrassment and his explanations and his excuses. He had to let it speak for itself. He posted it under the door and turned away to limp his slow way home.

The next morning, his leg hurt too much to get out of bed. Two mornings after that, his leg felt better, but despair had settled on his mind, weighing him down. For days, he left his room only to forage from his dwindling stock of food, until he was eating a heel of bread coated in the wipings from an empty pot of jam. Bear broke off from washing to stare at him judgmentally.

“Why don’t you go back to the future,” he said sourly, and rolled over to stare at the wall.

Finally, Rob barged into his bedroom and flung open the curtains. “Greeney. Get up. You’re coming with me.”

He cringed away from the daylight. “What? Where?”

“Queens’. Got a target there.”

He pulled the covers over his head. “I’m not in the mood to help you pretend to murder someone.”

“Of course you won’thelp. You’re deeply unqualified. We’ll be lucky if you don’t get us both killed.” Rob pulled the whole duvet off Joe’s bed. “But I refuse to let you sit and stew in whatever’s bothering you. You need to rejoin society.” He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Correction. You need to have a shower first.”

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