We settled into the pattern of long conversations spooling open, like unfinished nets. Whiskey left out on the sideboard, the light of morning transforming it into something not quite water. Cold meat for lunch, eaten at different times. A note scribbled on the back of an envelope: going to the village for supplies. Don’t wait.
The sash windows creaking and shuddering, trying to escape the wind that pins them to the cottage. Every so often, the cry of a seabird, hungry and mournful. Our old lives diminishing, our old crimes slipping away, forgotten in lieu of forgiveness, forbearance. Our old ties thinning to the width of a fishbone.
The shop, the village shop, is closed today. You have gone to pay a visit to the poison tree. In this low country I can find you, but I suppose you aren’t worried about that. There is time for everything out here. Time for me to catch you peeling back the bark, your fangs dripping with black sap, jaws wet as a hunting dog. Time for you to see me, to attempt to explain even as dark roots web across your skin, your eyes. There is no need for me to hurry towards forgetting, nor to thrash against the tide that will drag me down into warm and deep waters. So I do not pursue you. I wait for you to return, to pretend you had forgotten your money. And you will wait for me, when it is my turn to walk along the cliff path to the wizened limbs of the poison tree.
Alexander James 