ThE SPYdERS WEB

(the spyder’s web)

Before we met, you showed me your diary.

I am still confused by this sequence of events, as you must be too at the way you ran away from your shadow and ME after I read your secrets. I know that we have discussed many things, including my addictions and habits that you find so intolerable.

Before we met, you showed me your diary and then we were having sex on the wooden floor of your living room. I still remember the way the orchids filtered the sunlight and the sound of holistic music filled the room with mystery. Then your Maltese dog was at the foot of the bed, asking me where you'd gone. "I don't know," I told him, "I expect she'll be back soon."

Today I went into your study and found that you'd converted it into a gallery. The first photo from each roll of film that you used, you said there was a pattern to it. I do not see it. Oddly, I found that I could date each image, even the ones that hadn't happened yet. They seemed to go on forever, a jumbled, blurred and erratic array of unhappy memories, each one partially obscured by blinding black light.

I knocked over a jar full of dead butterflies but when I went to pick them up I was overcome with vertigo and I had to leave. We were making desperate love in your kitchen when you told me about the journey of the senses. You said that the person is just as real as the shadow. You told me that just because you aren't there yet doesn't mean it isn't real. You said it was like London still being real when you're in Paris. You talked about personal space and the chakras and folding canvases and I didn't understand anything except the way that your breasts moved and the way your breath misted in the cold.

Then we were in a restaurant and you were screaming and you said, "This is what it's going to be like all the time." A waiter dropped a tray and the contents floated majestically into the ceiling. It was beautiful. You did not think so and demanded that I gave up snorting cocaine and smoking ‘skunk’.

After you re-introduced yourself, we resumed our date and I asked you again why you'd chosen a supermarket. You told me that you had a special soft spot in your heart for dairy products and organic vegetables. You said that there was something endearing about the seriousness of it all. You said that they called out to our imaginations in a way normal vegetables can no longer achieve. You said that all supermarkets - no matter how dismal - were optimistic in that it assumed that there would be a future at all. We were on a train and you were explaining to the assembled group of passengers about the spider’s web. They were smiling and nodding. They didn't really understand but strangers had told them that your idea’s showed promise and, after all, the journey was going to be long and boring. The coffee tasted terrible and I kept fidgeting in my seat. You were radiant. No one thought to ask what would happen if the spider’s web collapsed.

Today, I watched a broken egg re-assemble itself on the wooden floor, in the main room, where the piano sits, waiting to be spoken to. The egg made a strange popping noise as the last bit of eggshell re-attached itself. It flew into the air up and up and then came to rest on the shelf, the one where you keep your diary. A helicopter roared overhead, as if hovering above your garden, monitoring our movements and your Maltese dog came in and told me that he was scared. I didn't know what to tell him. The spider’s web was becoming my life and no one can say how or when it will end. I remember your reaction when you read this letter.

I remember how the last line, where I say, "we weren't meant to live like this," brought a tear to your eye and you turned to your Maltese dog and tried to explain to him that I was gone. But how could you explain? What does 'gone' mean to a dog that has no sense of time? Then we were lying together under the stars and when the first fireworks went off, you leaned over and kissed me for the first time. You tasted of red wine and cigarettes. I can't blame you for choosing a new direction in life. When you finally came back, you were older.

That was the hardest thing for both of us, I realise that. We didn't share the same memories anymore. You held me and told me that it would be all right, that you had hardly changed but I think that we both know now that that wasn't true at all. Time changes people. That's how it works.Today, I went into the study and stared at the spider’s web. I can still remember the day you spun it.

I remember how you'll stand in front of a crowd of shoppers with your Maltese dog and your new hairstyle and you'll give your speech about the tyranny of love and death and the triumph of the singular and about setting us all free from the rituals of relationships. But inside, you'll be thinking, "I wish I was more honest with myself, I wish that I did not use people, I wish I knew how to love, I wish I knew how to be human." I know this because, before we met, you showed me your diary and you wrote about this day. How could you not? It was the most important day of your life. You saved yourself from the brink of madness and ended up listening to cd’s that claimed to cure the panic attacks. You asked me to listen to them as well. There's nothing I can do. I think it’s all in your mind and you are not the person that I first read about in your diary. The past is just as real as present. There is no before or after anymore. Because of you, there never was. You are not in love, I am not in love. Yet still we exist as shadows of each other. Existing in the same place at a different time.

We weren't meant to live like this.

The End.