I stand behind a door.

In this moment, and for only this moment, you are both alive and dead. Once the door has been opened, there is no going back. What is seen cannot be unseen. What is dead cannot come back to life. Your life is Schrödinger’s cat and even that feels too simple now. Too simple to believe that there was ever a moment between you being here and you being gone.

But in this singular moment, you are both, and you are neither. You exist as a void of possibility and impossibility. If you are always dying, you can never be dead. This moment comes before days which blend and blur with sleepless nights, before reality slips into itself, becomes an oblivion which grows and metastasises, in my lungs, in my stomach, in my blood. If the door is never opened, does all of that ever have to happen?


I open the door.

You are sat in your living room, arm against the armrest, as you always have. I sit on the arm of your sofa. I can smell the smell you have always had; the TV is off, as it always has been. I wish we could turn it on now, have this moment just a little longer. The light from your conservatory warms my right cheek. I hug you; I hug you so tight. 

“I have to go now” you tell me.


I cry. There is no more space for denial here, no more refusing to look, no more room for the possibility of both. The universe has decided. I feel so much regret, bitter in my stomach. I have no time for that now, either. 

“I will always love you”, I respond.

Even now, I don’t say it. I’ve never said it. I think of the last time I saw you. How even then, face-to-face with the inevitable, I denied it. “I’ll see you later.” - But we are all out of laters.

I feel you slipping away, you float and disperse. Gone.

I open my eyes; I have a missed call. I phone her back. 

“Hi mum.” 

She takes a breath.

The door closes.