Stupid things I remember about that love affair:

We met at a friend’s house. A huge house. I can’t remember the first thing who said to who, only that he was tired and wanted to go to bed, too polite to say so when I stopped him outside his room to talk to him. I had to talk to him.

I remember, just when I thought he was only being polite, him giving me the sandwich he’d made for his long journey home. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I just stared at it. I wanted to keep it in a box forever to remind myself that the moment was real. He said it was ‘Manitoba and cheese’. I looked up to see a huge grin on his face. We laughed. We said goodnight and hugged briefly, politely. I was certain I’d never see him again. Minutes later we kissed for the first time.

There was a knock on my door as I lay in bed. “Come in,” I said, hoping, hoping, hoping. It was him. He was babbling nervously and I just kissed him. He kept on babbling - still talking whilst my lips pressed against his. After that we lay in bed all night talking. Then he told me he had a boyfriend. I pretended to be shocked, but I think even at the time I knew. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it. It wasn’t fair.

I remember the last time I saw him, the night we kissed properly for the first and last time. He gave me a card with his details on it because he had to go away. I took it without reading it, and suddenly he was kissing me - we sank to the floor in a crowded room kissing like hungry teenagers. We stopped. Breath. Warmth, Staring at each other with an involuntary warm glow and grinning like simpletons. Then he made some comment I took completely the wrong way. The glow left me. I slapped him like Scarlet O’Hara, and ran away through the crowds of people, unable to stop crying. He ran after me, somehow reassuring, apologising and making me laugh and cry all at the same time as he chased me down the stairs. He held my face in his hands and made me look at him. He said, deeply, that he was sorry - that he didn’t mean what he said in the way I took it. That what he meant but couldn’t say was that it was the most perfect kiss he’d ever shared with someone. Then he did that thing he did - singing “you’re still the one I lust for” to Shania Twain’s ‘You’re Still The One’. Beautiful fool. We laughed holding each other on the busy stairwell - reassurance, uncertainty and restraint surging through us.

I remember waking up, instantly knowing where I was and trying to get back to sleep to read what it said on his card, knowing all the same that it was pointless. I buried my head under the pillow, breathing in the lingering warmth of the dream, chasing at its misty heels as it faded back to that impossible place where dreams exist. All I could see in my mind was the slow swaying of a silver pocketwatch - back, forth, back, forth.

I remember looking at the back of my right hand as Spring’s sun peeped through the curtains, used to the inexplicable routine now, over and over like a lesson not being learnt. Nothing - no eczema, no bleeding, broken dry skin. Then I remembered last night - the back of my left hand before I had gone to bed - red, inflamed, dry. Whilst I was awake. I don’t understand any of it - the significance, the coincidence - waking up with a physical pain and yet feeling a warmth and confidence for the rest of the day, despite none of it being something you can touch or keep. Despite none of it being real. I tell myself it isn’t real, that these things aren’t important. This is probably why I keep having these dreams that are more real than anything I’ve known.