Ad Hoc Fiction

Moving On
A strip of passport photos in innocent black and white; she’s looking cross-eyed, I’m sticking out my tongue. Two ticket stubs from David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight Tour, old Valentine cards; my name always spelt out in kisses. That first hospital appointment card; she’d written on the back a list of names we would call the dog we were going to get, she’d circled, Titus. The small wind-up robot, with the now lost key she’d bought for my birthday one year – her little joke. Magazine cuttings of the couch we saved up a year for; it was a lovely pale green colour, she said it was called Silent Peppermint. The plastic Tomato-shaped sauce-dispenser we stole from a café in Hebden Bridge.
      And each night, as the world falls silent around me, I pick out each item from the old shoe-box. Lay them carefully on the kitchen table, in chronological order.