It was a ray of light that used to shine into our bedroom

It used to light up your face as you slept in the mornings

It was the thing that made everything so peaceful and easy

but now its gone and so are you.

You rattle my soul like a ghost insane,

While acoustic dreams fill my mind,

With maddening screams of joy,

Of your delicate smile and sinister secrets,

As the hands that hold me tight,

Betray the mouth that lies so sweet,

As elegant suggestions creep and gnaw,

At my brain as it explodes,

In a technicolor chaos of momentum,

As we spiral into a deep well,

Of uncertainty and corruption,

With all the hope failing into the night,

As amber glows shine on us,

In darkened bars full of broken souls,

Lost, rejected or at the end,

Of everything that held them dear,

A lost past that they will never visit again,

Except in their drunken mind,

That seeps and leaks of hope,

A fiery despair that follows them,

For this day and the next,

Until all untold becomes forgotten,

And they disappear into folklore,

Like the story that we are spinning in,

A confused maze of games,

Confusing and exciting,

Guessing that never strikes true,

Moves that confound and entice,

Feelings that rise and soar,

Dragging daggers across broken sores,

As nails dig deeper,

Than the soul can hide from,

Rockets of regret fire at us,

As words stem from loose tongues,

And we carry on over and over again,

Never moving forward and never going back,

A relationship on the rocks,

Pounded by the sea of sequence,

As it plays on repeat,

With no hope of an end,

Or escape from the labyrinth,

With no hope of an end,

It plays on endless repeats. 

This is the story that we never finished. My last rites were read to me in the backseat of your battered car as I leaned against the worn old seat with my mind clouded by beer. That was back in 2004. I had long hair back then and a belief that life was going to deliver on the promise that I would be a success. It was that belief that mixed with the beer to give me an over confident and arrogant attitude as you broke down next to me. I remember my hand picked at the frayed hole in the knee of my jeans in an effort to avoid looking at you. Rain thumped down on the roof of the car and the darkness surrounded us. I remembered thinking about the beat that the rain was playing and wondering how it would fit into a new song I had just written. Mainly I remember that I was focusing on anything around me apart from you.

The truth is that I fell apart after that night. I walked around like a man dead to the world and everything in it. I was a cloud of smoke filtering through the lives of the people close to me. My arrogant attitude quickly died as I spiralled into a mix of alcohol and chaotic parties with no joy in them other than offering other lost souls to hang with. The band I was in broke up. I joined others, but nothing ever stuck. I was a man down on his luck. A man so unaccustomed to the world around him that alcohol became the only true friend. I did mad things and things that made people mad. I left everyone I knew behind and headed into a dark world of nothingness.

It was the moment when I realised that I missed you that my life changed. It turned around. It became stronger. I knew I had blown a moment but somehow in realising this it allowed me to focus on myself and to realise that the only person who had blown it was me and that the only person responsible for letting it happen was me. Maybe not a big shock to an outsider but it was to me. I was sitting in some bar and had been for many hours. The empty glasses on the table in front of me a testament to my many hours of drinking, while the empty seat next to me a testament to what bad company I was in those days. As I took a swig of beer I thought of you. The smile. The laugh. The way you used to mock me when I said something I thought was profound and you would just tell me I was stoned. But most of all, I remembered your kindness. The way you would care about me and look out for me. There had never been many people doing that. That was the moment that kicked me out of the darkness. It was the moment I realised I had destroyed something good in my life. It was the moment that I kick the drinking and found focus.

I went out and got a job. Not a glamorous job like I spent years dreaming of, but a job that actually paid my rent and got my landlord off my back. I worked hard and poured my energy into earning enough money to buy equipment for my music. Where once I had sold my guitar for a bottle of Jack Daniels, now I managed to buy a new one, which I spent one late evening spray painting it up to give it a unique look. I figured there was no point in venturing into the world of music if your guitar lacked its own unique look. But most importantly I wrote. I wrote so many new songs. They seemed to flow out of me all the time. I would wonder supermarket aisles while singing new lyrics to myself. It was cathartic but also necessary as it allowed me to address the mistakes I made with you. You were always present in all the songs. One after another they came to life and I started to record them.

It was at this point that another turn of events came about. People started turning up at my flat to get involved in my project. Musicians I had lost touch with seemed to find out about it and rock up at my door and offer help. Soon there was a regular gang of us dragging our equipment out to the nearest park for a jam or down to some back room bar that would let us practice. Somehow and in a way I am not sure how it came about I suddenly had a band working with me. We became a tight outfit as we ploughed through the songs and managed to discard some of the weaker ones. Then we realised that we had a set. We had formed a tight band with a strong collection of songs. The natural step forward was to start gigging.

The first few gigs bombed. I was terrible in front of the three or four people that turned out to see us. But slowly I sort of got it. I got some of my old arrogance back, which allowed me to stand in front of an audience and believe in the material. I guess in truth the material sort of spoke for itself. A battered collection of songs about a girl who like a ghost in my life still hovered around and influenced it. People started heading down to our gigs and things took on a sort of magic I could never have expected. The band became more than that, we became firm friends and a support unit for each other. It was a strong year in the history of my life and the one where I became the man I wanted to be. I was open to new people and open to what life throws at you. But throughout that period it was always you who I acknowledged for getting me there. Every gig I stood up and sung those words that to each person watching held a meaning, but to me meant every apology I have ever wanted to say.

I would have been happy enough to continue dragging those songs around town and playing to new people for the rest of my life. I felt alive. I felt alive that night that I stepped off the small stage at the back of the Camel bar and stepped into the private room we had booked for an after party and met you again.

My shirt was covered in sweat and my face covered with a grin as I walked up to the bar for my drink. As I leaned on the bar barely aware of a woman standing beside me and flagged down the barman I felt a strange tension around me. People I knew were looking over at me with a look bordering on concern. There was still noise in the bar, but a certain hush had descended around me. As I glanced around the bar I became aware of you next to me. An uncertain smile spread across your face as you noticed my reaction. For close to thirty minutes I had stood on stage singing out words, but suddenly I was totally lost for them. The years had been kind to you, very kind indeed. The smile still had such power. The eyes seemed to stay on me as you gauged my reaction. People all around seemed to watch me for my reaction. The moment had power. My mind raced for words. The barman stood in front of me looking bemused as he raised his eyebrows in question.

Then eventually I began to react. A slow smile crept across my face. My hand reached out and rubbed your arm to support the smile and then the moment was broken and people continued their conversations. Meanwhile you and I held each other’s gaze as the years seemed to melt away and we were back in some random bar from our past. We both ordered drinks and slipped into a quieter shadow to talk. The hours floated past and we found each other’s laughter again as we spoke and a closeness that I had missed seemed to creep back into my life.          

This is the story that we never finished.

You were standing smiling when it happened. In the park with the sun shining down on us as the city moved peacefully around us. You had blue jeans and a white shirt on, while a straw hat attempted to hide your blonde hair. In that moment your smile faded in the blink of an eye and was replaced with one of horror. Your eyes seemed trapped on a vision towards your white shirt as a large bee landed on it. A scream omitted from your mouth as everything seemed to move in slow motion. Your arms began flapping around like a swan attempting to take off, while the scream slowly reached my ears. The bee seemed oblivious to all the commotion and continued strolling across the whiteness of your shirt, as if on a day trip of happiness. As your scream died down it seemed to want to hide from everything and stepped closer to the gap between your buttons. This move was not appreciated by you as you began giving me frantic orders to help. I rushed forward with uncertainty as the bee stepped out of view underneath your shirt. You began to show a lot more concern at this latest development and begged me to help by unbuttoning your shirt. In a move more delicate than any surgeon I moved my hands to the buttons and began to gently unbutton them. A difficult task made harder by the pitch of your yelling and because the bee remained hidden underneath the clothing . With care and dedication I quickly unbuttoned all the buttons to reveal your suntanned skin and bright coloured bra as an innocent bee decided that there were better things in life than just hanging around all day and flew off. You leaned over and hugged me with all the thanks you could communicate in a hug, until we became aware of a slightly more awkward situation. We were two mid-thirty year olds embracing in a park while one of us had their shirt unbuttoned and a bight coloured bra on display, while around us families, teenagers and elderly couples stared over at us. Embarrassed grins helped in part to show our apologies as you buttoned up and we quickly took off.  

You walked out of the bar with another guy. A twist of your hair as you disappeared through the door into the nights cold. I turned back to my drink on the bar with all but defeat in my heart.

We had spent time in the corner of the bar in the dim lighting as your laughter echoed through the music towards the rest of the crowd. I had felt on a high. Every comment I said seemed to amuse you and as you leaned forward to stroke my arm at comments that seemed to amuse you the most, I believed that tonight was my night. We had always had a chemistry that surprised and intrigued me, a warmth that is sometimes hard to find with people in this city. We stood together talking as everything around us became invisible, just a backdrop for the scene that we were the leads in.

You had lit the party from the moment you had walked in. A bright smile that caught in the lights around the bar and seemed to light up the darker shadows on the edge. I had stayed on the outside of the group, in the shadows until you had seen me and walked over. This is how our meetings in social circles always seemed to work out. I would often already be at the party and hanging out with friends. You would enter and gain all attention without ever seeming to fight for it. Then when the conversations had began to die down, you would look around for me and we would end up apart from the crowd talking in the strange language that only the two of us could ever understand. We always had the ability to let conversations veer off on weird tangents, totally at ease with the chaotic nature of our minds. To an observer our conversations would seem biting, as we slung tame insults at one another about a new haircut or a choice in clothing. We were always comfortable in the knowledge that these were jokes and not true feelings. But often it was the mis-matched conversations where one of us would say something and the other would misunderstand, taking it into false direction that really set us alight. These conversations could never mean anything to anyone else and yet they were ones that we would re-visit when you would remind me of something I had said at a party a year earlier or over a shared coffee more recently. This was one of the reasons I loved the times we got to talk to each other, it was the fact that the conversations were shared memories that I knew you would hold onto in the same way that I did.   

We had spent a couple of hours sat in the corner of the bar, oblivious to the party that was gathered around us. Our conversation flowed along rapidly and time was only highlighted by the rise and fall of your laughter. Until the bar was close to closing time and then time began to slow down and people started doing rounds to cram in final conversations with people they had met earlier in the evening. This was when he had approached you. As I watched from the bar I could sense that there was some element of closeness between you both. This was not your first meeting. Nor did you seem to have the flow of a natural conversation. Nonetheless there was clearly something between you both and as the final bell rang out across the bar, I felt like a fighter who has lost his fight. As he began leading you to the door you turned your head and saw me, watching through the crowd. A second later you were walking through the bar back to me before pausing in front of me with a brief smile, you reached out and hugged me and whispered how much you enjoyed our conversation.

I watched as the door closed shut behind you and the bar appeared to grow darker.