“Do you think we’ll break up?” she asked. I nearly swerved onto the opposite lane.

“What?” I choked. The other cars zip narrowly past us by inches, but she doesn’t notice. “Why are you asking me this?”

“It’s just a random question,” she says, looking out of the window (one of the many she’s fond of asking, even at the most inopportune of times; don’t try to figure it out — there is no logical or linear train of thought to explain it). “So. Do you think we’ll break up?”

She turns to look at me. I think for a bit, turning the question over in my head; I fight down the faint stirrings of terror and answer back eloquently: “I dunno.”

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes at me. “I’m not suggesting we break up. I’m just asking.”

“Well –” I paused, trying to put thoughts to words. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there certainly isn’t anything to suggest we’re headed towards anywhere near a break-up,” I say. “No major disagreements. No discordant set of beliefs. None of those I-can’t-believe-you sort of moments.” I point out matter-of-factly, pleased at my patient, carefully-worded answer.

“Logical as always.” she sighs. We stop at a traffic light.

I turn to regard her with suspicion. “Are you thinking about breaking up with me?”

“No, silly,” she scrunches up her nose at me. “Just a random question.”

“Okay.” Green. The car ambles forward in the peak hour traffic; the skies change and shift in colour  with the setting sun.

“So,” she grins at me. “What would you do if we did break up? Like.. would you get angry? Break some things? Scream at the sun?”

Better to just go along with her questions, I thought. Easier that way.

“Well?” she presses, undaunted by my silence. I took a deep breath.

“I would go into the woods,” I say. “Or some place quiet. Somewhere far away, far from prying eyes, or voices..”

“You and your woods,” she mutters. “But why?”

“I don’t know; when you lose something, don’t you mourn? Don’t you feel some deep need rising up from within to lament, to cry, to — oh, I don’t know — at least do something? It’s not like misplacing a wallet or even a set of keys; it’s a whole lot more than that. Losing you would be missing an arm. Or a leg.  Or more. Maybe breaking up — as in the goodbye-forever, never-again sort of breaking-up, and not like those silly puppy-love games teenagers like to play — is like an amputation; it’s an invisible surgical excision of something precious or cherished, something worth more than life itself..”

“How incredibly dramatic,” she says drily, before I look offended. She quickly smiles, grinning. “Just kidding. Go on.”

“It doesn’t make the pain any less real, I suppose. Some will cry buckets. Some will wander around in familiar places, with a lost, wild look in their eyes; others go about like nothing’s happened, entwining themselves around something numb and hard and cold, like lifeless stone.. until everything unravels and unwinds back at them like a careening whip, and everything shatters.. like I said, we mourn, we grieve, in our own little ways.” I pause, thoughtful.

“Someone’s been thinking about all this a wee bit too much, I think.” she laughs. I shoot her a look.  “Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “What about yourself?”

I ponder her question as the sky over us darkens into evening.

“I’d run,” I tell her. “As fast as I can, in the opposite direction. Drop off the face of the earth. Into a place where no one knows my name. Where no one can recognise my face. Where I can be all alone, in solitude with my phantom pain. I’d want to stop existing — to be forgotten — like the man who wasn’t there.”

“Isn’t that incredibly selfish?”

“What’s selfish is to expect me to behave like a sane, rational human being after losing you.”

“It’s not the end of the world, dear. Life still goes on. You’ll meet new girls who will fascinate and inspire you, and also love you as you deserve; perhaps even more than I ever will. You’ll never know — she might even agree to have a pixie cut.” she smiles (I love pixie cuts, but she’s adamant to never have one, in spite of all my attempts to convince her otherwise — her excuse being that her ‘thick unruly hair’ isn’t suited for it, and would make her look like a thirteen-year-old boy).

“It just doesn’t work like that. Don’t you see? I don’t want these imaginary ‘better’ girls. There’ll always be someone better, in some way or another; there’s only one you. And there’ll never be anyone else like you, not with your looks or your smile or your voice or all your flaws.. call me dumb or foolish, but I only want you.”

“God,” she jokes. “I had to fall for a romantic.”

“And you’re stuck with me,” I chuckle. “Or at least until you break up with me. Until then you’ll just have to put up with the occasional bouts of tawdry, mushy monologues.”

“I’ll live,” she says, winking at me. “But why the woods? If I were you, I’d pick the sea. I love the sea. I’ll watch sunrises and sunsets and pick conch shells off the beach. I’ll dip my toes into the water, or walk the shores to feel the sand under my feet. Catch the sunlight on my face or in my cupped hands; I’ll do all these things, every day, until the heartache ebbs like the waning moon and tides.. there’s a grand beauty about the sea, something inviting and transcendent, as if you’re staring right into the very eyes of God himself.. but the woods? The woods are a maze. They shut out the open sky and cut the wind into pieces; it’s a labyrinth of greens and browns and strange noises..  you can only see fragments, like streaks of sunlight and broken clouds.”

- ‘5: Autumn, part two’, from Thirteen 2 Thirteen

“I remember the first time I fell in love.

I was five and it was the end of the summer, with nothing dreary like schoolwork to finish, or mundane things like chores to do. I was a child and not much different than the rest of the little boys and girls who are five. (Perhaps I had an overactive imagination, but which child does not?) The world I knew was everything from a child’s perspective: I hated eating my greens, going to bed early, and packing my glorious mess of toys; while in reverse and with equal passion I loved stories, waited with bated breath for my father to walk through the door in the evenings and my name bellowed through the house, so loud and strong, so full of joy, and the park. Oh, the park. How I loved the park.

It was the park, you see, where I fell in love for the first time in my young life.

The day itself began simply. My mother would plonk me on the playground, just like any other day, while she gathered with the other housewives at the park benches for their daily chatter. Their talk would always seem strangely complex and out of reach; shooing me off whenever I tried listening too closely — not that I tried very hard, of course — for the playground was where I really wanted to be, all of the time. It was my fortress, or my interstellar spaceship, the vessel on which I rode off on towards all of my grand adventures and feats of derring-do. That day, I was battling the fearsome pirate captain Blackbeard, whose devious swordwork was proving an equal match to my own skill (I would eventually triumph of course, slaying the sea scourge and laying hands on all of his ill-gotten plunder). Blackbeard and I were at a particularly intense deadlock when I felt a tug on my sleeve.

“Um.. hello.” It was a girl’s voice.

“Whaaaaat?” Arrr! You’ll never best Blackbeard, you mangy cur! (I didn’t know what mangy cur meant then, but it did sound like something a foul-breathed pirate captain would use).

“Umm.. would you like to play?” That girl again. I’ll make ye shark-food, Cap’n Jon. Make ye walk the plank!

Clang! Zing! Whoosh! Cap’n Jon and Blackbeard danced with invisible swords, with sails and clouds and mizzenmasts, the roar of waves thrashing upon the hull, a sea glittering like liquid diamonds, all of it, forming our scene.

“Can’t.” Never, Blackbeard! It is YE–I mean–YOU! who will feed the sharks! The two of us balanced precariously on the guard rail (which was actually the see-saw), parry, guard, thrust, block, riposte, waging a truly epic duel where I would win, be given lots of gold, and be made Admiral of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Which was always the case.

“Whyyyy.” the girl whined. This time, she shook me by the sleeve, and pulled. Hard.

“Yeaaargh! Noooo!” I yelled, losing my balance and crashing back-first on the sand. Bwaahahaha! Maybe in your next life, Cap’n Jon! That filthy Blackbeard, laughing and jeering, his manic grin showing his teeth, all gold, his real ones taken away by the scurvy.

“Oww.. why’d you do that for? I almost had him.” I said to the sky and the tops of the trees. Their leaves were beginning to change colour, and the air was getting a wee bit chillier by the day. It was as if I had only begun to notice autumn was near, before I realised then that that was probably why my mother was trying to get me into my coat for the past week (it was annoying; a brave sea captain doesn’t wear a lousy coat). I couldn’t see the stupid little girl who turned my victory-imminent monumental battle into a humiliating defeat.

“Had who?”

I sighed. “Never mind. Now I’ll never be Admiral of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.” The name was long and impressive, as all good names were, and I liked it. Which I actually got from one of the books my father gave me.

“Oops. Sorry. Are you okay?” she smiled down at me. She stooped towards me, her raven hair spilling down the sides of her face; her large eyes, dark, black and rich, peered inquisitively into mine, her face mere inches away from my own. “Mr Admiral?”

I startled, and sat up quickly in a shower of falling sand and fallen leaves. I quickly leapt to my feet. “Yesi’mokayi’mfinereally. Really.”

“Why won’t you be Admiral of Her–?” she frowned, pouting her lips as she tried to remember.

“Admiral of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.” I said, glaring at her. She was just about the same height as me.

“Can I be one too?” she beamed, no matter that she had no idea what that was, much less the responsibilities of such a lofty, important position.

“No. Girls can’t be admirals.”

“Why not?” she gasped, looking scandalized.

“Because only boys are allowed to be Admirals. But I can’t be one anymore,” I huffed.

“Why not?”

“Because I was fighting Blackbeard, and you interrupted me, so I lost.”

“I said I was sorry. Maybe I can fight Blackbeard and win and be an admiral!” Her eyes shone at the thought of it. She smiled and giggled. The first girl admiral!

I pointed at her and stamped my feet. “No! You can’t be an admiral because you’re a girl.. ow!” I couldn’t see it because I was wearing my jeans, but I had somehow scraped my knee in the fall and it suddenly decided to let me know about it then.

“What’s wrong?”

“My knee.. it hurts.”

“Was it because of the fall?”

“Yes. It’s all your fault.” It was really bad and started to bleed. I teared, involuntarily, at the pain; there’s nothing in a five-year-old’s life that quite prepares him for something like the first time he’s cut his knee.

“I’m sorry.” she looked genuinely remorseful, confused even; after all, how does a tiny wisp of a girl know how to fix a big bad hurt in a boy’s knee?

“It.. It’s okay..” I trembled, trying very hard to be brave like Cap’n Jon. He fought evil pirates and sailed through stormy seas. A cut was nothing. It certainly wasn’t something to cry about.

“I know!” her face lit up, smiling, as an idea struck her. “It’s something my mom does.”

“What is it?” I supposed anything would have helped. Anything not to cry.

“This!”

She leaned in towards me, so suddenly that I could not react, cupping my face in her tiny hands. My eyes widened in shock. Her lips pressed in against my cheek, squashing her face against mine. It was certainly not delicate, nor gentle, and I swear it was the nigh-autumn air, not her, that carried that sweet smell of crushed flowers and fallen leaves, of forests and the grass lying in their shade; I don’t know if a five-year-old mind can process all that kind of information, but I remember it, clearly, even today, as easily I would recall my own name.

“Mwuuuu-ahhh!” she exclaimed, child-like in its exaggeration. “That should make it better!” she laughed, trilled like a note of music, delighted at her own cleverness.

I must have been quite a sight: frozen still, clutching at my face now and my knee forgotten, mouth hanging agape, staring at her in open astonishment.

Then someone called her name, a sound that was pure static in my dazed state. “That’s my mom! See ya! Hope you’re feeling better!” she said as she turned with a wave, running off and away.

I said nothing, nor budged an inch. I simply stared at her departing figure, hand still on my cheek, with the indelible impression of that kiss still lingering underneath my fingers. I didn’t understand it then, what had happened to my little five-year-old heart.. I just didn’t have the words for it. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t know whether it was the kiss itself, or the silly sound she made, or the promise of autumn; there remains something wonderful and magic about that day, something mysterious and golden; all I knew was that a place inside of me had changed forever, something so natural and ordinary and marvelous, just like how winter will surely end, and lead to spring.

To my five-year-old self, love was like autumn for the first time: it was red and gold, a sea of colour; it was discovering that a girl could capture you just as easily as your own dreams and adventures.”

- ‘4: Autumn, part one’, from Thirteen 2 Thirteen

“Let me tell you a secret: writers are selfish.

It’s true. We are a self-absorbed, parsimonious, mercenary bunch. And we love flaunting words that the non-writers don’t (our world is neatly divided; we who write and those who don’t). We are brigands who will steal words and phrases and mean to make them our own forever. We are not smart nor clever. We hide under the covers, waiting for the moments between twilight and dawn, and then emerge bright-eyed, glinting with a touch of madness and heartache and genius, all armed with the tools of our trade: keyboards, or felt tip pens, the journal we paid too much for (but they were so pretty), or sharpened pencils covered with that comforting, fresh-shaven smell of wood.

And we all have a box where we keep the things we have stolen, lost things we have picked up in our drifting thoughts and daydreams, and each night, alone, in a swirl of words, we take those things out, one by one. Things petty or powerful, they are all there in that box. Like the smile of a girl you love, or the look in his eyes as he stares out the window, or the sad lines on a stranger’s face. Mist rising up and above a canopy of trees: ascending from the quiet spaces in between the aged, patient trunks of a forest lining the side of a mountain in far Virginia.

Perhaps, more than anything, we write with this little box wide open, our little treasures strewn across the floor like a heart full of sorrow. Full of tears and stifled sobs behind closed doors. That’s why I’m terror-stricken every time I write. Every time I open my box, I’m afraid that all of it will come rushing out like Pandora’s ghosts, escaping and dissipating, whisked away by the wind to disappear with the crack of dawn. Free.

Gone.

So I watch people. All you sad, smiling, happy, unhappy, delighted, anguished people. Walking around with empty bubbles and adjectives floating around you. So full of stories, so filled with sensation, every single one of you made up of little miracles stitched together by time and not knowing it at all. And I listen, fascinated, like how I watch, now, the way the light from the amber-washed morning sun slips between the gap of two adjacent buildings. I want to burn that sight into my mind. I want to write about it. I want to write about you. Because to remain silent, to allow the words to erase themselves from my fingertips, would kill me. It would wipe me out.

All of you, beautiful, not in the way your features are arranged on your face, not in the way your voice sounds when you sing, but only in the way you simply are. Don’t you see? Don’t you know? You are not your failures, your little disappointments, nor your moments of doubt and hesitation; you are beautiful, just by being. Always.

We writers are bandits. We are thieves. And I steal away all these moments in which I watch and listen and stand awed by you, so I can write it all out, in long lines and with pages full of words, just so you can see all that I see in you.”

- ‘3: We Thieves’, from Thirteen 2 Thirteen

“Once, a long time ago:

“I hate tea.” I make a face after a sip of the ghastly murk swimming around in her cup. “I can’t imagine why you drink the stuff.”

We’re in a cafe, one of our favourite ones, with big wide windows that allow the sun to spread out across every surface in the place. The varnish on the old wooden furniture, each piece with entire histories written across its grain, doesn’t just glow. It shines.

“I love tea.” she says, small fingers around the handle, pulling her drink back to herself from across the table. She flips her magazine shut. Old men sit at the counter, faces wrinkling as they talk with each other in low voices; customers fill their silences with closed eyes: Rickie Lee Jones on the radio, the sound of her voice so old and so young, as if she had seen too much and forgot too little.

“So I’ve heard. I still can’t figure out why.”

“It’s smooth. Delicate. Like dew on grass.”

“What it is, my dear, is that tea is a drink for invalids. You don’t drink it. You nurse it. Like a cold.”

“Here, now –” she protests, but I cut her off.

“– Coffee. Now that is a real drink. Something you can really savour –”

“Savour? Nonsense,” she rolls her eyes at me. “You guzzle it by the pot, you hopeless addict.”

I wave away her groundless accusations. “No, no. Coffee is something I partake. Not guzzle. Coffee arabica, shade-grown, roasted and then brewed to perfection. Fine art in liquid form.”

“But tea is synonymous with civility. And tea predates coffee by almost four thousand years. A Chinese emperor discovered it.”

“Now now, you can’t possibly believe every fairy tale you come across just because it suits you.”

She ignores my  little quip and continues undaunted: “Whereas the first cup of ‘joe’ was discovered by an African goatherder. You know what that is? No lovely handmaidens. No finely-woven robes. Goatherder. Herder of smelly, braying goats. So — if we’re being accurate here — coffee was a peasant’s drink.”

I pause, and then say, “Now, surely you know that it is donkeys that bray. Goats bleat.” I grin.

She looks at me testily, scowling, knuckles whitening on her scrunched-up magazine.

And that’s how we would bicker and banter. Always have. Like silly little things who have nothing ahead of them, nothing more important, with all their lives to live, days and years stretched out before them like a promise. Listening to Saturday Afternoons in 1963, talking witless talk about tea and coffee, knowing we would still saunter out the doors hand in hand at the end of it, spilling out onto the sidewalk like sunlight.

But I had never imagined it to be like this. Like today. Like now, when my heart is pulled across the room like a translucent sheet of white paper, punched clean through the middle. It’s a hole, a great big tear, and you can see right through it to the empty chair where you used to sit.

“Stupid woman,” I say out loud. But there’s no one else to hear it. “Why did you have to leave.” It’s not a question. It’s not. Especially when the answer’s written all over the empty house.

Stupid woman. Don’t you know that love is a whole life, like what that writer said? They never talk about what’s after. They talk about the sunlight. The voice of an old young woman over the radio. The little worlds we conceive in our heads and the tiny shelves where we put our hearts. But never about what’s after.

What’s after is this: It’s an empty space where you used to be. It’s the dusted brick of tea lying untouched in the kitchen cabinet. It’s the foolish grin tucked away under my face. It’s ordering one coffee and nothing else. It’s your face, your skin, your hair, your smile. Each living on and on, through a hundred Saturdays, but only on the inside of me.”

- ‘2: What’s After’, from Thirteen 2 Thirteen

*

Listen with Aimee Mann’s It’s Not

Rickie Lee Jones – On Saturday Afternoons in 1963

“She was a girl made out of words.

I would never find out how she came into existence, the way she burst into being into this life. I imagine it would be like the way the colours change and shift during sunset – blazing amber and diffusing angry orange, lightening and softening into a hazy mix of blush-pink and rich lilac, all in the space of mere moments – and before you knew it, the sky darkened as it swelled with the hues of a deep, mysterious purple.

You stood there, mouth agape, eyes transfixed, each filled with colour. Tasting the sweet salt of the sea air on your tongue.

Looking away your gaze would fall on her, woven together by strange alphabets wrung from lost languages, finding her way into your world in those moments the colours changed. Those moments that your eyes missed.

And just like that your world had changed forever. With a single glance. It’s just like how that tired old cliche goes: ‘Words have power’. If you let them, they reach into you with long fingers and a grip like death’s: they will wrap themselves around your heart and write themselves across it.

Words can have a hold over you that clings on even in the afterlife. They unmend and they unravel just as well as they make sense of things. They destroy. Just look at how words on a screen can break the heart of a boy miles away. They drip hate, unveil scorn, and they will leave you behind with the same fierceness with which you pursued them. They leave you utterly alone, gasping, crying even, in the darkness.

But words — they are the dreams of heaven. The bliss turning your toes fleet and light as if they could fly. The brightest smile you have ever seen. They’re all just words. Words that read themselves out to you, long and soft and laced with music like a voice over the phone, strung together by sentences and syntax, pulled like string into the most beautiful girl you know.

She was just like that. A girl made out of words.

It scares me sometimes, when I realise that words are the only things I have left in me.”

- ‘1′, from Thirteen 2 Thirteen