plutonia on cromwell

i am nude and about to get dressed. she is dressed and about to be nude, but it's her strong voice i recognise first. it echoes round the change room and wrinkles the decades: she clarifies the steps for taking a japanese bath; calls to order the rattiest girls in her classroom (me among them); summons her kids and their friends (me included) to the backyard for tea.

i catch glimpses of her as i dress and dry my hair. she looks the same. my hair is long again as though the intervening years never happened – neither the dreads nor the shorn advertisement to lesbians. in the ladyhawke moment before she gets into the bath and i go upstairs, we hug and say hello. get told off for talking too loud. 

all the way through my massage i think about her son … how we ran riot in playgrounds at dusk. how cool i thought he was as Fagin in year eight. how he kept me sane in doncaster, knocked on my window til i answered. stood beside me when i most wanted to vanish. how we fell apart. about platonic male friends and how close I still hold them. how far away.

i come downstairs and there he is, waiting for his mum, sitting cross-legged with his own son (older now than when his father and i first met). i kneel awkwardly until his son offers me a headrest. i could do with a headrest - my head is too full of information and fuzzy from this cold - but I don’t know what to do with it. they both look beautiful and kind.

i take flight.