The costume is off

The costume is off. That's the thing she took — not the secret, the suit. The panic in Leeds, the way my chest folds before I walk on. That was mine to carry. Now it's a Tuesday anecdote. Two glasses of red and a freelancer with a podcast and suddenly I'm a quote.

I said you should be. I watched her face. She flinched a bit. Then she reached for my hand and I let her hold it for ten seconds, in her kitchen, and I let go because if I kept holding on I was going to do something I couldn't take back. I don't know what. Crying, maybe. Worse — saying out loud that I forgive her.

I walked home in the rain. Opened the Moleskine, wrote the title of the bit, closed it. Sat there until two. The second I write a joke about this, she gets the punchline too. She doesn't get the punchline.

The hoodie is on the chair. Pryce would have said don't let them see you count the cost, lad. But Pryce has been dead ten years and I'm sitting in the dark counting it. The chest is doing that still thing again. Waiting. I'm not going to meet it.