And the words fell away from me.

And the words fell away from me

Because they always do.

Always inadequate, stumbling, sentences taken away from me before they should end. That’s how it was, talking to you.

“Beautifully inarticulate, falling,” he said to me once, describing the words of the album he held in his hands, my favourite album, my favourite hands. He asked for a cigarette, noting the tobacco stain on the index finger of my left hand, and he said, “I see you haven’t given up. I've tried, but it’s missing from me at this moment.”

And he rolled a cigarette and we sat and talked about little things, the little things I still remember. Different to the time I met him in the street, unwell and distraught and he listened and comforted and drove me round the corner, just round the corner, so I wouldn't be alone. He had a tape player in his car and music that sounded exotic to me then.

He said, “‘What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,’ apparently,” and he smiled. I wish it had been true.

When I was tired and drunk one night I sent a note to him, scrawled on paper, covered in dew. Intoxicated, inarticulate speech of the heart, falling down the page. Scrawled on paper, sent by messenger, covered in dew; oh he knew, yes he knew.

We stood outside and smoked and chatted and he spoke of plans and where to go, so animated, so full of ideas and hope and knowledge. Ready to leave for more, something more, calling him on.

And we hugged, said fare thee well and he kissed me goodbye on the neck, stumbling, awkward, kisses misplaced, off the cheek, off the cuff, near the collar bone. Them bones, them bones, them bastards who dried out your bones. I wish I had known more, known how to help you, what to do. Try as I might, I can’t help but think about how you must have felt at the end of it all, on that night.

There were messages and those messages meant so much to me. I still have them. Not ready to give them up; not quite yet.

One day the call came, and I heard that you had decided to go and would not be back. I was with my dear friends, and they asked me what I wanted to do, and I wanted to go away too, and so we three went away together. And I think of you often. And I still think of you often.

But again, the words fall away from me

Because they always do.

Because I haven’t the words to do justice to you.