SHE PLAYED ME LIKE A STEEL GUITAR
Winter trees scrape the cracked sky. Clouds like old bruises mass in the late afternoon. I walk on.
She played me like a steel guitar, coaxing out sweet sliding sounds at will, just for the fun of it, for her own amusement. The rough pads of her guitarist’s fingers snagged on my skin, set up a friction. We fought often, drawn back again and again, always with her in control, cool, scoring the movement in ways I didn’t understand.
In the street there are houses boarded, steel shutters in place of doors, pebbledash rendering streaked with black. Bin bags spew onto front lawns. A dog eyes me, contemptuous, rasps a bark, runs off.
‘Let’s go away together,’ she’d said.
‘Where?’
‘Does it matter? Got to move on. Find the new.’
So we went. She knew places, people. They smiled at her, looked away from me. She smiled at me, told me lies, drew out another tune. I danced to it. The crowd applauded.
The crescents, the walks, the closes, all spiral away from me. I stop in the middle of the estate. A gang of boys look me up and down, laugh, swagger on, hands in pockets.
‘We’re so good together,’ she’d said. ‘We’ve come so far.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Without you I’m dross.’
I believed her.
Wind whips round the corners of this estate. Mudded slush soaks through my boots. More dogs and boys are circling round me, ready to move in for the kill.
I heard the sound of a country and western ballad float on the breeze, bright and crushingly sad all at once. She said something into the wind as she waved. Her smile was bright. I thought she was saying good luck, but she was saying goodbye.
The clouds close in.
*
