wytchcroft

They will claim it was tears, they will claim you cried, biting down on the plastic as you lay in the back of the truck - but I will know it was the busted rear axle and your skeleton was always the most sensitive part of you.

Why would you want to cry? What could be left from the shards of your old life that you would keep, that you would clutch at weeping? Photos of some ephemeral connections - a time when your personality was in demand... before it was ONLY your personality that was in demand.

I cannot imagine... it would be, what? A biscuit box full of Kodak shards, splinters - blunted, oranged with age? Plucking them out with a liver-spotted hand. "Oh that was my house! There - yes it was small, but a fine home for many years." Dear God, but you would never come to that.

And I can't see you from where I'm sat, hunched in the slippery cushioning of the truck cab, keeping an eye on Katy and her wild driving.

We are taking you away, taking you clean out of yourself. I won't believe a single whisper that smears you with nostalgia, with memory, with loss.

The first time I met you - I don't know if you remember, I was just a junior librarian then - not even a journalist, just a bookish fan, one among the -

But you complimented me on my dress, I remember.

I am giving up something too…

You -the you that smiled, looking over her sun glasses with eyes like two cracked windshields.

The windshield of the van is muddy - we are taking the lowliest of back roads after all.

And later, when your voice was going - when the rumours of your addictions were beginning to spread, when the stage lights hummed with a whole new tension and the opera programme hinted at retirement, I met you again.

"Are you a dancer?" You asked, as I fumbled with my bag, trying to get my notebook out with trembling fingers.
"I only speak to dancers."
You were firm, even as your words were not, they were just smoke, the humorous Garbo posing of a fatigued artist.

And for why?

I remember the tabloids, they sent young boys with vampire smiles - and they pushed ahead of me in the queue.
"Is it true about the surgery?" they demanded to know, "Did they take the skin from your ass?"

"The audience took my ass a long time ago," you wise-cracked, always the worst of actors, "and so did you."

And the boys lapped it up.

And then when your film failed - and failed so... noisily - they came again, with their teeth freshly sharpened.
But no more.

Now you lie in the back of a truck, now you escape everything that was, everyone that was, even me.

I will be getting out soon - the driver never wanted me to travel this far, "Too fucking dangerous!" she lied. They will all lie - if they think it will keep them closer to you for the last few moments, before you are gone.

And it is good practise, for me, to listen to them lie. I am going to have to learn after all, once I have trudged back through the cold wood, moving between the trees and listening to the twigs snap like gun-shots - or the crack of a conductor's baton striking the stand. Once I have got back then I can tell the tale and my lying will begin.

Everything is prepared. Your final performance will be a triumph, and the only one left to trumpet for an encore will be me.