We make our start in the predawn dark braving damp early April cold, loading the blackened harp in the back of the car then edge it out onto the road. I don’t want to go. In convoys of self reflection we each keep to our own culpability hunt through memories - each of us armed to the teeth with fine-tooth combs. I don’t want to go.

I just want to go back to her smile in the wintertime, crisp jack-frost grass under clear classy chilblain skies, and turn her around. I want to go back, cast my blind eyes into the sun, while she sits there laughing and telling me “It’s nothing much”.

Yeah, it’s nothing.

Whack-a-mole rage leaps out of each page when there are no feelings on show: my tired arms have been hammering hard as our old car winds past abandoned homes. I don’t want to go.

I just want to go back to her sat by the riverside, as salmon-spawn ripples rolled out across the creeping tide; I think that’s where we all drowned. I want to go back, cast my blind eyes into the sun, while she sits there laughing and telling me “It’s nothing much”.

Yeah, it’s nothing.

I want to go back, creak the floors of lapsed grace, pleading cap-in-hand with the false angels and saints, and whisper to phantoms that never take hold that you get to waste time when you get to grow old. I want to go back, reach in through the glass veil, paint her stories in pictures when a thousand words fail, tell her each happy end leaves its own kind of scar while I’m bandaging chapters in the back of the car. I want to go back, cast my blind eyes into the sun, sit here in darkness until my time comes - because you just wait for answers until you give up - and I want to go back, tell her we’re trading places. I want to go back, save us all from our fates and I want to go back, and laugh that it’s all nothing much.