The bit stays

I didn't reply to Yara. By the time I got home I knew I wouldn't change the bit, which is one thing, and the other thing is I didn't tell her that yet, which is worse. I sat on the back room floor at the bookshop and my face did something I would pay actual money to take back. She said the kitchen was hers. She heard about the set from someone at the Beehive. I know who from. I typed two replies and watched them be wrong and then I deleted them and I have been thinking about that silence every twenty minutes since.

The bit stays. A bloke I have never spoken to handed me a flyer in the shop today. Paper bag, forties. Said you've got a face for this. I put it in my pocket and felt briefly like a person who is meant to be doing what he's doing. Yara saw me the same week and her version of being seen was a text asking me to stop. I am carrying both of those at once and I don't know which one is heavier.

I phoned me mam and didn't mention Joan. Didn't mention the Tupperware. Sat on the sofa afterwards and the radiator ticked and I thought: this is the small quiet of a person who has decided something and not said it yet. She thinks I rang about nothing. I rang about nothing. That's the truth too.