The Things That I Can't Say is a mix of poetry, songs and short stories.

Leaving.

As last meals go, it was a strange choice. Standing, for the last time looking out across the Straits from the window of the room, once a place of joy but now become a cell, Jones dipped the hot cross bun, chilled from its overnight resting place in the fridge, into the last cup of coffee he would ever drink in this place.

By the door, his suitcase was packed with all but yesterday's clothes which he had put on while preparing to leave, a plastic carrier bag to put them in and the clean clothes he would put on just before he put his keys on the bed and walked out for the last time, clicking the button so the door would self-lock behind him.

She would come home to a clean, tidy, empty flat, not expecting that all signs of his ever having lived there had been eradicated, nothing more tangible than memories remaining.

It had cut him like a samurai sword, the tiny note that had slipped out of the bottom of a wardrobe door and placed itself in his path on the way to bed. He had picked it up and without meaning to had looked at it – and the handwriting he did not recognise. It was on her notepaper, the notepaper she kept next to the bed, and it bore a declaration of love. And a thank you for a wonderful few days.

She had been cooler in these past days, responding in a way he thought was a little mechanical, lacking in the tenderness that had been the thing he lived for. She had not returned his little touches, had slept a little further away, had not replied quite quickly enough when he told her he loved her, had not replied that she loved him.

He had put the note back in the wardrobe, not knowing where it had originally been placed. As he did, he intended to pretend he had not seen it, had not read it, that it did not exist. But, in the loneliness that came before sleep, in a bed they had shared for years, it weighed on his mind like a bag of rocks in a tumultuous sea.

Jones had suspected she was being unfaithful for some time, that at least one of her “friends” was more than that, that she was sleeping with someone else when he was away on a trip or when she was overnighting in town for a meeting. But he denied it to himself, redoubling his efforts to please her in dozens of new ways, ways that did not delight her. He performed a task of Herculean impossibility; she accepted the gift that officially did not exist, a thing she had been trying to find for more than a year in the face of the statements by the manufacturer that it would not be available for at least one more year, with little more than a neutral “thank you.” She should have been beside herself with delight but she responded as if she had been thinking of something else when a waiter brought her a cup of tea, an automaton response instead of the child-like glee Jones had expected, anticipated, prepared for.

This was her place. They lived together at what had been his place but had become their home. She kept this small flat which they used as a second home, a crash-pad in town, both keeping little more than survival kit until a few months ago when he noticed a few creature comforts creeping in. A few more books, some CDs, more bedding than was strictly necessary, some nicer, going-out, clothes that somehow never made it home, a growing supply of underwear, much of it of the kind he liked her to wear but she said she didn't find comfortable, accessories that accentuated her already divine shape, a variety of perfumes. Storage containers appeared to keep the excess that no longer fit in the tiny wardrobes that architects and builders think modern couples can cram their lives into, more pots, pans and crockery, floor mats. All these things were turning a pied-á-terre into something more. Quietly, subversivly, it was becoming a home.

The original plan was that they would be able to pack this place up into a couple of suitcases that would fit into the boot of their small car and leave together with no fuss or drama when the time came. Now, although his stuff fit into a single case and a laptop backpack, she would need a small van to evacuate.

Instead of walking to the door, hand in hand, laughing as they took their last kiss in the lift for the benefit of the security guards watching on the closed circuit tv, he was preparing to take his last shower and walk out alone.

He would leave the flat, arrive at the front door of the block, walk to the kerb and flag down a cab. It was a clean execution of a plan that had just one fatal flaw: he had absolutely no idea what destination to give the taxi driver.

In his backpack his passport burned, demanding to be used. Should he simply go to the airport and get onto the first plane going anywhere?

He knew one thing: he did not want to go home. Suddenly, he had no home.

At home, at what had been home, he would walk into the life he had just determined to leave. Their life. Packing a single suitcase and walking away was hard; facing the awfulness of packing up half of an entire life and trying to decide where to send it would be immeasurably more so. This was something he did not want to do.

Suddenly, the enormity of being alone, of being unable to turn to the one person he needed most to be able to rely on, hit him like a blow to the solar plexus, a sudden, unexpected, inexplicable pain and no obvious cure. He fought for breath, like a child winded in a playground brawl.

Everything he knew, everything he depended on, everything he needed as the rock upon which his life was built had been ripped away by that single scrap of paper. A paper-cut of surgical precision.

He did not plan on leaving a note. What could it say that was not trite or deliberately hurtful? He was not interested in vengeance, not interested in hurting her as she had hurt him. He did not want an eye for an eye, he did not want to go out, find another woman and leave the bed stained with the marks of savage revenge. All he wanted was to be somewhere that did not remind him of her and of what he was walking away from.

But surely she deserved to know why every sign of him was gone. Jones reasoned with himself. He could wait for the remaining two hours until she came home, explain and go. But he knew that while he was strong enough to deny his suspicions, he was too weak to say goodbye.

And so, as he sat shitting in their tiny bathroom for the last time, as he showered alone in the cubicle so small that when they showered together her breasts rubbed against his chest and his erection slid between her legs, as he put the used towel that was the only remaining indication of his sometime presence in the washing basket, packed his shaving kit and toothbrush into a plastic bag and stuffed it into a shoe and his aftershave and deodorant into its partner, put yesterday's clothes into a plastic carrier bag doubling as a laundry sack, put them all into the places he had left vacant in the suitcase, pulled on today's clothing he knew what he had to do.

Opening the wardrobe, he took out the note and put it back exactly where it had fallen. Then he went to the freezer and took out a single-portion pack of a stew he had made weeks earlier and which she had been enthusiastic about, the last time she had shown real pleasure in his presence. Even now, he knew he could not fail to care, even on so simple a level that she would need to eat when she came home.

Putting the flat keys on the table – he had decided that leaving them on the bed was unnecessarily unpleasant - he pulled up the handle on his suitcase, slipped his laptop bag over his shoulder, took one last look around the bedroom, went back, tugged the bedsheets tidy and plumped the pillows, left the door open, glanced around the one room that served as kitchen, dining room and living room and opened the front door.

Pressing the knob on the back of the lock to trigger the slam-lock, he checked his pockets and ran through his mantra: keys, wallet, phone.

Pushing the button to call the lift for the last time, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. As the lift doors opened, he called up the the address book. As the lift closed, he removed her entries. As the doors opened at the ground floor, he opened his messages. Nothing from her in the past 18 hours, not even a “goodnight” message, but there was an “undelivered” response to the one he had sent her. He highlighted the thread of messages to and from her and hit “delete.”

He smiled at the security guard and wished him “good morning.”

“Going away, sir?” asked the guard, as he always did when he saw someone leaving with a suitcase, expecting a reply to a different question, a question that would tell him how long a place would be empty so that he could log for his team to check for unexpected activity.

“Yes,” said Jones, scurrying for the door before the unasked question could be given form.

At the kerb, Jones turned to the left. He did not want to stand on what had, until two steps ago, been his own doorstep.

Checking his phone, he saw that it had finished deleting the hundreds of messages of love, passion and longing - and mundane domestic stuff like to remember to empty the washing machine - he had had stored. He went to the next menu and deleted the instant messaging software they had both installed so as to be more easily in touch without spending a fortune on SMS. He deleted her from his Skype address book.
At the corner of the road, just a few metres away, where the traffic lights were always on red, he stopped.
Literally, he was at a cross-roads. And he had no idea which way to turn.

Standing upright, formal, lifting his heels just a centimetre or so from the pavement to help the blood flow and to prevent him feeling faint because his breaths became shorter as the enormity of what he was doing hit him, Jones tried to think where to go, what to do next.

Automatically, he flagged down taxi after taxi knowing that their red light meant they were busy but realising that, by doing so, he was at least giving the impression to anyone watching that he was doing something not just standing on the corner failing to make a decision.

A cab pulled up and, as it stopped, its red light turned to green. The passenger got out of the other side as Jones opened the door, then moved to the back to put his case in the boot.

The departing passenger, her back to the car, pulled her small cabin bag from the seat, turned to the front of the car and walked away.

Jones slid into the back seat of the taxi and, as it pulled into the traffic, smelled her perfume and gazed on her departing form for the last time. He turned off his phone, knowing it was the act of a coward.

“Where to?” said the taxi driver.

“Somewhere that isn't here,”said Jones. “ Drive. I'll make a decision later.”

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Take care out there

Take care
Not everyone's a friend out there
Oh, yes
Take care
Not everyone's a friend out there.

You're striking out on your own
You've said all the things you wanted to say
You've reached the end, crossed the line
And you've come to say goodbye.

Who knows what you're planning?
You say you've a plan
It's a no-action plan
In a world where everything is action.

Take care
Not everyone's a friend out there
Oh, yes
Take care
Not everyone's a friend out there.

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Songs of Love and Loneliness II

I sing songs of love for you
And of loneliness for me
There are those that think they are wonderful
And those that think they're twee

But bear in mind that I,
Unlike all of them, you see
Wrote Songs of Love and Loneliness
So you'd remember me.

--

© 2011 Jefferson Galt. Published in the USA. All rights reserved.