Gene Murphy Writer

I wake to a text to say she won’t make it.

In the back garden I smoke a cigarette for the first time in 12 years. No cough.

The fridge door is jammed again so I eat dry cereal and watch in delirium as a lie detector exposes a husband’s affair. They had been married for 8 years.

I open the champagne at 1:30 PM. In the dense afternoon heat, I watch the fizz flatten as the bubbles burst one by one. The tension headache wears off after some uncounted paracetamol.

I sit for a while in front of my street facing living room window, dozy.

In daydream I’m standing in the school hall after graduation. It’s empty and I’ve been left behind. My wife comes across the announcer and tells me that the baby won’t stop crying.

I’m then standing on a beach in an incessant breeze and at the mercy of time. My daughter is an incomplete sand sculpture; would-be arms outstretched, ending at the elbow. The wind takes her grain by grain and I watch without action. I then cry father’s tears which themselves turn into an ocean in which I drown.

The fridge door comes unstuck and I eat the cake for dinner. There are no candles. There is no song.

At 9:14 PM she texts again to say sorry. She still has a lot to figure out, but that maybe we could go for a coffee sometime.

Cars still pass my Friday window and so too callow revellers.

I last until midnight with two bottles of wine.

I hold the sofa-side family portrait in my hands and slowly slip away.

I’m back on the beach building a sand sculpture.  

This time she will be complete. This time I will hold her.

-end-

all words are mine. if you enjoyed the story, let me know.

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