Our Infinite Fates

AFTER brEAKING INTO CERI ’ S flat, I didn’t see him again for a couple of days. Not outside the flower shop, not in the cafe reading a newspaper, not in the bookshop’s poetry section.

My insides felt like a beehive, writhing and buzzing with anticipation, though I couldn’t quite ascertain whether I wanted to see him or not. True, a confrontation could be disastrous, but it was Arden .

Arden, less than a mile away, after decades apart. A sweet nectar I had never been able to resist.

Whenever I heard my teenage peers explain that they liked someone because they were funny or smart or kind , it all seemed so reductive, so one-dimensional. Sure, I could ascribe such bland descriptors to Arden – they were poetic, and creative, and stubborn, and reserved, and wise. Gentle with wildlife, tapped into the natural world in some fundamental way. Philosophical, deep, if often melancholic. The embodiment of saudade.