We were twelve or so. The precise assignment set itself no longer matters but when our various essays were returned to us, the one that Jennifer Hamilton chose to praise was Helena’s description of the desperate last gasps of a drowning man. Where she had succeeded, over five hundred words of cold, clear descriptive writing, was in never falling foul of the temptation to implicate herself emotionally. For most of us, at that age, the point flew over our heads but it came back to me in later years and I remember it still. I’ve no idea if Helena still writes but she has gone on to do other good things, as many of us know.
I once tried to explain to C what it was about Barcelona that I loved so much when one day she reproached me, amongst other things, of simply wanting to live somewhere I thought was a good label to my life. What she was implying, I inferred, was that my presence here was an act of no consequence. I remembered today, as I crossed the city from end to end on “bicing”, what it was I wanted her to understand; how the city encompasses some form of singularity in me, constantly projecting tones of places in my past and the hurried strokes of faces I might yet come to know.
I’ve lost years to an absent grief that cares not a bit for me and that I thought was managed and buried but which has been pouncing on me of late when I least expect it; all thoughts of her banned and yet I’ve caught myself exhaling her name from time to time.