Missing.

There are moments when missing makes time melt. Like Dali's mis-shapen clock faces, my present bends and breaks into a past that's never far away, no matter how many years have gone by.

Tonight, camping in a Speyside field,  sipping a beer while the dog snoozes and a song slipped out of my phone, pulling my reality and blurring the edges. 

The Eagles. I Can't Tell You Why. The song, not me. Back 40 years, 18 again and sitting in a house listening to that song with Mark. Mark long dead. Dead. 

Grief and missing catches me, blurs everything, and I need someone to catch me because I feel like I'm falling.

And here's the weirdest thing. A part of me wants to stay in it.  And another part of me feels guilty about Iain who loves me but lives all the time with this ghostly other who can turn my head to the past in an instant.

Missing never stops and sometimes - like tonight - it feels acute and chronic all at once. New and old, surprising but familiar. 

A field in Scotland. A living room in England. Separated by 40 years and a breath. 





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