The wall of in-between

If you are the one who died, 
why is it that I feel myself to be a ghost? 
The sun's rays shine straight through me as I sit 
like a spectre on the wall of in-between. 
You opened a door to the other side 
and now it won't quite shut. 
I fear that if I close it, 
I might lose you forever.


Sure, I know how precious life is, 
I have seen first-hand how tenuous our grip 
but how can I live wholeheartedly when half 
of my heart is on the other side of the wall 
and the only access to it is through that door, 
the door I cannot go through, 
the door I cannot shut?

I want to seize the day - 

it might be my last after all. 
But the day I want to seize is a day with you in it
and the days we seized together
are numbered now and finite.
There will be no more. 

So I sit on the wall with the door ajar
and hope for a time when
I might keep your presence 
with me in the whole of my heart
and be wholeheartedly present, 
my outline solid as the sun sets again
on a day well-lived. 

Sunset on Burbage - 29th September 2015

The last great day

The last really great day we had was twelve days before you died. It was Saturday again but this Saturday you had jobs to do, the first of which involved erecting a giant ostrich outside of the Psychology building at Sheffield University. You were done early and came to meet me and the dog in the park. It is one of those snapshot moments again: the sight of you running towards me, the reciprocal smiles, the open arms, the warm embrace on a cold day, the way we held each other, pulled apart, linked hands and moved on together in one motion, already deep in conversation.

I saw your friend the other day. Sometimes I think your friends find it hard to imagine us together. The big, scruffy blacksmith who they saw at home in industrial workshops seems incongruous maybe with this, how do they see me, posh arty-type? They never saw us together. 'What did you and Paul do?' he said. I want to tell him that we made love morning, noon and night, the way new lovers do. That it really was love we made. That we talked and talked and talked. That we walked the hills and lay down on bracken gazing at clouds shifting above us. That we hugged a lifetime's hugs, in hallways, on steps, in parks and kitchens.That we danced and cooked and sang and played, like life was a game and we were winning. That we shared music and ideas. That we sat together on sofas and benches and across the table, debating the rules of Scrabble. That we read poems and recited Shakespeare standing on kitchen chairs and compared our artistic tastes in galleries across town. That we browsed bookshops and craft stalls in search of hidden treasure. That we raced to fill the gaps in crosswords and conversation, but could sit peacefully together. That we loved words but didn't need them. That we tossed those words between us like the ping pong balls across the table at the Abbeydale Picture House, equally matched, always. That we opened our hearts and cried tears of sadness and joy together, that we shared our dreams. (How it hurts now to be the keeper of your dreams.) That we schemed and planned and how we laughed. They can all understand, I'm sure, how we laughed.

That day was no different. We made love at lunchtime and hung out in my kitchen cooking. I made sweet potato brownies for the first time while you investigated the delights of turmeric tonic. (An interest in nutrition was another surprising thing we shared. You were looking after your health. You wanted to live. 'I want, I want, I want,' you said, like you needed to squeeze every last drop of pleasure out of your time on earth.)

My brother called round with his partner and children. I wanted to introduce you to my family. I watched you sitting across from each other chatting and saw the future - barbecues, bonfires, you constructing braziers in his garden, a world of harmonious family Sundays to come. The world that I had never known. He knew, like I did, that finally I had found a good one.

You went back then to take down the ostrich. I stood on the plinth and nearly broke it. You chided me. We laughed. I watched you and Ed prostrate yourselves beneath the ostrich's feet, watched you doing ninja moves with his kids. You wheeled the beast back into the building and we hugged again and I watched you hug Ed's crying child and saw my own sweet son in your arms and, at that moment, I knew. I really knew. 

I went to have tea with my friend, aka Madame Zucchini and you went to the gym. (You were keeping healthy, losing weight. You wanted so much to live.) We were reunited with you at the Free Radicals gig. We made a gooseberry of my friend, kissing and cuddling in public. I'm so glad now that we did. You drew pictures on the tablecloth - a tree and an owl, I think. And you won her over when you turned Mr Mushroom round to face the band, propping him up so that he had a good view, teasing her gently. I saw an old boss from a previous job. She told me how her partner had died of a brain tumour. 'Spend time with your loved ones while they are alive,' she said, like a harbinger of doom. 

I tried to dance but I was tired and grieving still for my mum so you drove me home, stayed for a quick cup of tea and then went back to help the band dismantle the equipment. It was a day of putting things together and taking them apart. That day, for me, it all came together. I didn't know that it would fall apart. 

I met my friend in the cafe on the Monday, updated her as I did each week. 'I'm going to introduce him to the kids,' I said. 'I just can't see anymore how it can ever go wrong.'

The Road Less Travelled Part 2

Today your mum and I went on our own adventure. Where she used to rest her arm on yours, today she rested it on mine. Where I used to hold your hand, today I held hers as we went on a voyage of discovery down the hidden path to the river at Baslow. I helped her to find her way back to the memory you shared and she showed me a spot that you hadn't yet taken me to. We fed ducks, held back tears, searched for you in clouds. We shared our stories, felt your presence, mourned your absence. We watched the nameless fish beneath the water - trout, perch, carp?  It seemed absurd again that you were not there. We don't know how to do this yet, without you. But together we took fairy steps into the light of the sun.

The Road Less Travelled

The first day that we went out together feels like the happiest day of my life, though I know there must have been other happy days before it, in years gone by, memories faded by time. This one shone so brightly though, I'm not sure it will ever be eclipsed.

You arrived at my house, freshly shaven in your bright blue fleece and the shirt that became known as the 'Beverley Shirt'. You came equipped with tools on the pretext of sorting out some jobs but you didn't do much, just cut through the chain that bound my bike to his, set us free.

I made chilli and told you of my internet dating exploits, taking in the barely concealed look of disappointment on your face when you realised you were not the only man on my radar, though you were already, the only man in my heart. And then it began. The first adventure.

You took me to Redmires, stopping the van by a derelict building to take pictures for your 'shack project'. (The folder sits on my desktop now.) Later you told me how mesmerised you were by the look on my face as I stood like a ghost in the house. You wanted so much to capture that look again, but I didn't know what it was. A mixture maybe of uncertainty and desire. A look that probably belonged just to that day.

And then the real journey started, from the car park and up the hill. We went through the wrong gate from the moment we set out and strayed further and further from the path, but closer and closer to each other.

'We could make a coffee table book,' I said. 'You could take the photos and I could write poems to go with them.'

You sent me your photos of that day and I sent you a poem.
'A beautiful way to remember a magical day,' you said.
Our collaboration had begun.

A Road Less Travelled

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

and knowing he had but two choices,

Frost chose the road less travelled,

laying words along the path as he went

like a mantra for wise feet to follow.

But you have led me to a landscape

that dips and dives like the nameless birds

that swoop overhead in the September sky:

starlings, skylarks, swifts?

Here, I'm not even sure there is a path

and though you claim to know where you're going

in truth, we neither know nor care,

content as we are to wander and to wonder

side by side in the open expanse of the day.

Mostly we spring on tussocks,

tossing words and laughter as we go,

moving swiftly from grassy hump to hump,

topic to topic, to avoid getting bogged down,

marooned in the mire. And though we speak

sometimes of paths taken and not taken,

trod and untrod, we plant our feet firmly,

smack bang here in the glory of the present.

Then we spy a spinney, a copse, a triumph of trees

waving their branches to us from a desert island

in this sea of purple flowers and we know

without a shadow of a doubt that we must

abandon the path (was there ever a path?)

and head to this oasis, like pirates

(you do have an inner pirate don't you?)

on a quest for hidden treasure.

And we join hands briefly as we tred on rickety rocks,

assail the barbed wire fence, go AWOL on the moors.

But then something unexpected happens

and one view leads to another and we see

a house - a solid pile of stone perched

above a tranquil pool like a call to home.

And, still in sync, we change track again,

cross the bridge from the past to the future

and back again.  And we sit, side by side,

watching ripples from hidden fish on the water,

not knowing where we will go next

but thankful for the road less travelled today.

Saturdays and Tuesdays with Blacksmith Paul

I'm reading Tuesdays with Morrie at the moment.
I can only read about death.
I can only think about life and death and love.
I can only live in the heart of this pain.

I haven't been able to watch TV since you died.
I've tried a few times but there is nothing that doesn't freak me out.
Even Neighbours is too distressing for me now -
people keep falling in love or breaking up or being reunited
or getting sick or living or having accidents or getting married or dying.
Fictionalised, it's all too much for some reason.
I want to escape but instead I find more comfort from writing and reading,
even though it means diving headlong into heartache.

Turns out Morrie would approve:
By throwing yourself into these emotions,
by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, 
over your head even,
you experience them fully and completely.
You know what pain is,
you know what love is,
you know what grief is.
And then, maybe, one day,
what,
no, it's too soon
to even think about
letting go.

I watched a bit of Anne of Green Gables with Edie,
tears spilling from my eyes.
My Gilbert Blythe is dead.
My happy ending is gone.
Nothing is safe.

Our days were Saturdays and Tuesdays.
Saturdays and Tuesdays with Blacksmith Paul. 
It's not as catchy.
I need to work on a title
for whatever this is.

Every day we had was precious.
'One day,' you said. 'We're going to have a bad day.'
But we never did.

On the beach at Filey. A very happy day

The man of my dreams

I dreamed about you again last night. How I have longed to dream about you. One of those gentle dreams where you might appear as if in a vision and offer me some words of comfort. Or the other kind, where you might just be there talking and laughing as you used to. But this dream was a dark dream.  You were sitting, eating and your belly was swelling up as if each mouthful was inflating you like a balloon. And the next minute you were running towards some marble steps. You tripped and fell and then it was over.

'Be quiet,' I said to my children in another dream. 'I just need to send this message to Paul.' And I pegged colourful flags to a washing line, desperately trying to reach you with some kind of domestic semaphore.

I had spent three days desperately trying to reach you before we found your body. From time to time I re-read the messages now. They start casually with a 'Hey. How's you?' on Thursday morning and end with desperate pleas for you to get in touch on Saturday. All shades of emotion are there: humour, worry, fear, anger and despair. I left every kind of message: text, Facebook, voicemail, notes on your van and your door after all of my shouting and crying outside your house in the darkness had failed. You couldn't come to the door because you were already two days dead, lying on your bed, alone. I thought you might have gone out walking, (it was quite normal for you to go wandering in the night), though my tears and shaking limbs held a different possibility and I knew already that there was no happy ending to the story. Either way I knew that I had lost you. I couldn't commit to a man who would disappear for days on end without warning and the only alternative (ridiculously far-fetched though it seemed) was that you were dead. In the end, though I lost your body, our love was restored when we broke down the door and found you there.

'Hey Jack,' I said, in one message that week. 'Have you seen Bert? I can't find him.'
You were a man of many aliases. To most people you were Paul Harding, or Blacksmith Paul but on Facebook you masqueraded as Jack Smythe. You were one of those Facebook sceptics, wary of giving away too much. Jack Smythe, the exorcist from Vatican City who studied at the University of Yangon and lived in Timbuctoo, California, born in Hong Kong. To me, you were also Bert Mulligan, the persona you inadvertently set up on your new phone in order to communicate with me via Messenger. You didn't realise that you could just connect to your old Facebook account. It led to some interesting exchanges. Jack, we saw as a vagabond and a pirate. An all round ne'er-do-well. Bert was also a bit of a scoundrel, who worked the fairgrounds. They were bitter rivals for my love. Once I invited them both to my birthday party and they planned to resolve the issue once and for all with pistols - water pistols, of course, because the children would be there. Occasionally, our banter would get so convoluted that, eventually, I would have to ask if I could speak to Blacksmith Paul.
'I love Blacksmith Paul,' I said.
'At last, Beverley Writer,' you said. 'She's the one for me.'

When you woke on the Sunday morning before your death, you told me about your dream. You told me that in the dream I had walked off into a pub and that you had gone through a door and found yourself in a disused factory. It seems portentous now that we went off in different directions and that you ended up in an empty factory, alone. Sad and poignant, though a disused factory would have been an Aladdin's cave to you.  I wonder if that is where you are now. I hope that soon, you will come back to me in my dreams.

The Blacksmith writes about our first date

Paul's reflections after our poking making. Found in his notebook after his death.

A day with Beverley Ward - Wednesday 26th August

After a brief meeting with Ed and co, I met B after an interval of some years. The last time I met her was at a Free Radicals gig......small world! Anyway, we spoke, chatted, she offered to give me a lift to my house (we were in Baslow at the time). It was dark, she dropped me off. I said perhaps you would like to come and have a go at something. A date was arranged. 


Fast forward, she arrives. I am strangely smitten with this intelligent, proudly beautiful woman who has undergone many emotional trials - bad husbands, poorly son, difficult father. We have a fun day. We make a poker. We talk a lot. We have much to say. She has brought some homemade flapjack - very healthy and delicious.


The day draws to an end but there is a brief moment, I think a possibility of something more. It passes. Nothing has happened. 


Later we embrace. I am restrained in my hug. I am not fully open.  She leaves.


Afterwards I ponder on the feelings I have and recall what was said, her behaviour and begin to analyse it all. Perhaps a mistake! My first thoughts are how I yearn for her completely, physically and emotionally but as my assessment of the situation becomes ever more forensic I realise she is out of my league and I am seized with a deadening emotion. I feel paralysed, weakened by the realisation IT CAN NEVER BE.


Next day is work. I am out of sorts. I realise I must turn the situation around and just think of it all as one lovely day with a lovely woman.