THURSDAY
20 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               I spent all my life planning an escape from Halsett but now all I want is to go back. As I pull into the car park of my building in Banbury, weights lodge into all the gaps in my body where a man my age is supposed to have muscle.

The city only shows me its worst face.

Though maybe it's not entirely fair to put the blame on it and none on myself. A GCSE history lesson comes to mind, an anecdote of an art installation displayed in Paris supposedly depicting Cairo. The French fawned over its beauty only to travel to Egypt and baulk when it was unable to live up to the expectations of their exotic oriental escape.

I was seven when I decided to come to Oxford.

Dorian's eldest brother had just started his degree and Dorian showed me pictures of the campus and Rueben in his robe. The Gothic architecture enchanted me at once. If places like this existed in the real world and not just fiction, I had to see them for myself. What could take me further from Suffolk than the hearth of academics and fitted black clothing?

The delicate spires reaching for the sky and lancet windows never lost their charm, but in hindsight, I would've been just as content going to any university — more content, even. Getting into uni would've been an accomplishment without it being a prestigious one, and I would've been able to enjoy it more if I wasn't so worried about fitting into the narrow descriptors of an Oxbridge student. Maybe I would've even made a friend or two.

When people asked me why I wanted to go to Oxford, my response was: it's what I've always wanted. It was what I always wanted...

But why? Pure habit.

The stench of cigarettes is the only thing to greet me at the door. I cough and cover my mouth with my arm as I stride across the apartment to open a window. Hanging out of it, I breathe the crisp winter air. It pinches my nose with each inhale but it's preferable when juxtaposed with the nausea stirred by ageing tobacco.

How did I never realise the smell was so strong? At what point did my brain stop registering it altogether? And how did Dorian manage to stay here overnight? He hated it and he stayed anyway. Have I always been this self-absorbed?

I'm slow to turn around. The flat waits for me exactly as it was when we left: one of my sliders face down by the door, the chair where I sat while Dorian packed pulled out, a half-smoked cigarette waiting in the apple marmalade jar I use — or used, hopefully — as an ashtray.

June Jordan's Selected Love Poems on the table.

I approach it with weak knees. Lowering myself on the chair that waits for me, I pick it up, and, with quivering hands, part the collection in the middle.

Despite being a hardcover, the spine puts up no resistance and the opening embraces me with cypress and chamomile. How many times has Dorian held this for his scent to imprint onto it so intensely?

The poem I've landed on is called It's About You: On The Beach where Dorian has underlined the words: a colour / yours is orange. With a lump growing in my throat, I turn to the previous page where he has marked the lines within our love the world / looks like a reasonable easy plan with a note in the margin. "I love you." That's all it says.

Fanning through the collection, I see these on every page. There is no analysis in his annotations; they consist of underlines, love confessions, and short memories from our life that always end with "do you remember?"

By the time the book flops to the title page, my cheeks are wet with tears. Now that I'm alone and unrushed by fury, I take the time to read the inscription properly. Ille me servat et ego illum servo — He saves me and I save him. And below that, along with the noted year of 1991, a second note, transliterated because he knows I can't read the Hebrew alphabet: Bishvilcha Yesha'yahu, Yakiri.

You're cruel for this, Dorian.

If I had the money for such petty acts of revenge, I'd march into a bookstore right now and buy a copy of The Great Gatsby which I'd transcribe with: you're an arsehole, Doron. Lech tizdayyen. 1996. Or maybe I'd get The Picture of Dorian Grey and instead etch into the cover: I'm done with obsession. I'd prefer you murder me. You've got the knife and I don't want my soul to need you anymore. Just murder me, please, let my body rot in your attic.

Or maybe I'd shed the pretence of bitterness and get him a collection of Maya Angelou or Walt Whitman's poetry, where I'd write: You saved me.

The shaking of my hands only accelerates as I return Jordan to the table. His inscription gathers into a stone that sits in my throat.

Tears blurring my vision, I drop my head back. Only now do I notice that Dorian organised my seasonings. Dried herbs are on the top shelf and spices below, each in alphabetical order, except on the lowest shelf are smoked paprika, garlic, and chilli flakes — which I put on everything, including toast, how does he know that? — along with my supplements. He dried and put the dishes away too. The rack beside the sink is empty for the first time since I moved in.

This apartment feels more like a home now than it did once over my four years of living in it. You turn any place I love you in into my home.

I haven't had a cigarette since the day we arrived in Halsett but now my fingers itch to hold one. I don't know how to pass the time in this city without smoking. There's enough nicotine in the walls to make me sluggish but it falls short of providing any relief.

When I drag myself into the bedroom, I slump instantly onto the bed. It smells like him. If only it was our bed. If only it always smelled like him.

My tears seep into the sheet until it's damp enough to wet the mattress underneath. Dorian's words float in the dark behind my eyes: "I want to move forward". "I want to move forward". "I want to move forward".

I want that too.

I want to wake up beside him. I want to risk being late to work every day, not because I'm in agony or numb and just need seven more minutes of sleep, but because I want to hold him for another eight. I want to get through the worst days knowing I'll see him when I get home. I want to tell the friendly stranger who rushes to my aid when I collapse in the middle of the grocery store to phone him instead of insisting I don't need help.

I want to read beside him and interrupt his tasks with thoughts the author provokes. I want to bring him drinks when he composes in the garden and loses track of time, glasses which will be forgotten as weights on his score paper for hours when he becomes busy kissing me instead. I want to wake up at three in the morning to find him scribbling notes in the dark, so deep in focus that he doesn't notice when I turn the light on for him. I want to watch him cook. I want to cook for him when he's ill or has a long day even though we both know my food doesn't taste half as good. I want to see the ocean for the first time with him. I want him to fasten my tefillin when my fingers ache too much.

I want to thank God for restoring my soul into my body every morning and actually mean it.

I think I pass out for a moment. At least, when I sit up, my cheeks itch with dry tears and the swamp of lethargy is heavier.

On the top shelf of my wardrobe, which is too high for me to see, is a shoebox. I take it down as if it's made with glass rather than cardboard and, sinking onto my knees right where I'm standing, ease the lid off.

The earthy scent of Halsett exhales from the box.

There are only three things inside: my friendship bracelet, orange and blue; the only poem I didn't destroy, the one I read to Dorian the day before everything ended; and my old Whitney Houston t-shirt.

I lift each item and carefully place them on the carpet in front of me. This is all I allowed myself to keep, aside from his striped cashmere jumper which I've worn every day and that only smells like him thanks to the illusion of memory. He never even wore it when it was his.

I pick up the t-shirt. The orange fabric is so worn it gains the lightness and translucence of luxurious silks though it's as common cotton as any. Muma's moringa perfume still clings to it.

It's woven out of the balmy days we spent by the river when I'd swim with it on and lie on the bank until it dried again, when we walked homeward with the setting sun blinding us until we reached the bridge and had to part ways, of the poetry I read on the coach which was the only place I was able to be alone without feeling unsafe, and of the stolen moments in my mother's house when I dared to phone him or dance choreography I memorized from watching MTV at Auntie Tamila's when she braided my hair.

I bury my face in it, shove firmer and firmer so the cotton might absorb me and I could live forever in the memories it carries, and if that is to fail, to suffocate myself.

Maybe moving forward isn't something I'm capable of. Maybe I'm too scared of forgetting.

I never owned a camera so I wrote poems. Did I curse myself to never be able to let go of the past by becoming a writer so young? Why did nobody warn me? Why did none of the poems I read serve as warnings? Why was I so foolish I failed to understand?

I was never taught how to ride a bike but I wasn't afraid to scrape my knees. It's vital in youth to make scars to carry memories. But few of my scars have cool anecdotes attached to them, and of the fresh wounds, even fewer. Pain has made a gallery of my body. I can hardly bring myself to look at it on most days. You look at it like the sunset.

I miss watching the sun set on your skin.

Notes

Bishvilcha Yesha'yahu, Yakiri: For you, God is my Salvation [meaning of "Isaiah"], my darling.

Lech tizdayyen: Fuck off.

Tefillin (singular: tefillah) and shelyad: Prayer boxes. Black boxes that contain scrolls of scripture that are tiedto the body with straps. There are two: one that is born on the upper arm (shelyad: lit. of the arm) and one that is worn on the head (shel rod: lit. of thehead).

On this line "I want to thank God for restoring my soul into my body every morning and actually mean it", in Jewish practice, the morning prayer is thought as soon as you wake up. It goes as follows:

I give thanks unto You, Adonai, that, in mercy, You have restored my soul within me. Endless is Your compassion; great is Your faithfulness. I thank You, Adonai, for the rest You have given me through the night and for the breath that renews my body and spirit. May I renew my soul with faith in You, Source of all Healing. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who renews daily the work of creation.

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Only ten more chapters to go! I'm actually so excited. Thank you so much if you've made it this far. Let me know your thoughts on the story so far if you like <3