Are less than the things he lost in the fire. Which are less than the things they lost in the fire. What is lost and what is less cascades down in light grey flakes of ash.
Without a scale to measure all these things lost and less, without eyes to have seen it all, without hands to have touched it, we move on with the immeasurable.
We leave the party early. We air kiss and move on. We go home. We listen, we listen, we listen. We look on the maps, we scan through the reports and we listen, we listen, we listen.
In the morning we do ordinary things. Breakfast somewhere, a ride, a gallery, the laundry, a coffee with a sister, an evening with the candles on, a children’s movie, food we haven’t tasted before, a good innings in that place, a day at work, at day at the races.
When the rain comes down it is hard and brief and it washes nothing away. Not the things I lost, nor the things he lost, and least of all the things they lost.
The tallies rise and the platitudes billow like smoke.
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And I try not to let the morbid rise, but sometimes I make lists. Only ever to ten, why count again?
1. A photograph of Katherine and I, matching striped pyjamas, sitting on my mother’s bed in Sunbury. We are maybe twelve, we have green face masks on. We are smiling.
2. Two carved shells. One in the shape of a mussel shell, inside there is a small Chinese village with a water wheel in the background. The other is a man pulling a rickshaw.
3. A pink fabric covered diary, with gold corners. Inside a vow to lose the same five kilos I am probably still trying to lose. A poem to be a better person.
4. Pressed flowers in a blue wooden frame. You delivered them to my house which was in the lane off the street near where we went to university. I’ve never dried flowers since.
5. A signed key from my 21st birthday, filled with well-wishes from well-wishers I don’t know anymore.
6. A bottle of perfume. A duty purchase of duty free proportions. My grandmother often smelled of 4711. I rarely wore the fragrance, but I often had a bottle anyway.
7. One size small neutral coloured body suit. Or girdle, or something. You’d know it if you saw it. My nanna wore them, almost ever day. It was why she was so firm to hug. Once, when things were going pretty badly, I fit into it. I’m glad I don’t now.
8. Three silver glomesh handbags.
9. A pair of waterproof overpants. Not worn since we went camping after another fires. I watched the mica rise in golden puffs as we walked and waited for the fishes which never came.
10. Nothing important. A selfish portrait. A photograph of you. A photograph of me. A love letter you once wrote me.
You can lose it all again and again and in the end, nothing is lost.
Why not? Isn’t that this year’s motto?
Drag it out into the factory floor, unbundle it from its boxes, pile it higher and higher, an angry pyre to what might have been but isn’t. Unscrew the lid from the jerry can, add your fuel as you desire. Then light the match and walk away and, as they say, watch it all go up in smoke.
I’ll roll a cigarette and light it on a flying spark, inhaling and exhaling life as death comes to me with each sweet breath.
eleanor j jackson 