I hope you're doing wellGenuinely. Not the polite version. I hope it worked out, I hope she's kind to you, I hope you stopped doing the thing with your hands when you're nervous. I hope you never think about me at all.
I hope somebody is kind to you todayWhoever you are, reading this. I don't know you and I never will and I mean it completely.
Thank you for not askingYou sat next to me for the whole hour and did not once ask what was wrong. I have never been so grateful for a question that didn't come.
I only said it onceAt the hospital, when you were already past hearing it. Thirty-one years of not managing it and then I said it to a room.
You died before I got round to being interested in youYou would tell the same three stories and I would wait for them to end. I have spent the last four years trying to remember the details of stories I refused to listen to.
Her handwriting is on the kitchen calendarIt has said March for two and a half years. Nobody in this house has mentioned it and nobody is going to turn the page.
I moved the chair and then put it backIt had been three months and I thought it was time. I got as far as the doorway.