The first time ever I saw your face.
Roberta Flack.
God, that first verse is so lovely.
There’s something sacred in it. Fragile and reverent. It’s like she’s singing it with both hands cupped around the words to keep them from shattering.
But the rest of the song never fit for me.
Not for what this is.
“The moon and the stars were the gifts you gave.”
That line… it melts me.
Every version. Roberta’s, Johnny Cash’s.
It’s beautiful in a way that hurts too much.
It doesn’t belong in my mouth.

Sometimes I think about reversing it.
The last time ever I saw your face.
That’s the one that matters.

There are people I saw for the last time and didn’t know it.
An airport hug. A familiar squeeze, a wave through glass.
Gone. The ache of that memory.
A friend who stopped messaging. A neighbour whose curtains stayed closed. Schoolfriends, cousins, former lovers. A teacher who became a friend.
No fanfare. Just silence where someone used to be. All gone.

My uncle, dying of cancer, smiled from the edge of whatever world he was halfway into, and said,
“If I don’t see you no more in this world, I’ll meet you in the next one, so don’t be late.”
A Hendrix quote, he said it like a blessing.
I nodded because I understood. He knew I understood. He gave me the song when I was a teenager.

But it’s the sick children that undo me.
I can't bear the thought.
There shouldn’t be such a thing.
It should be impossible.
No child should have to understand dying.
No parent should have to sit beside that.
Even on the periphery looking in, only vaguely connected, it changes you.
You carry it in your marrow.
You can’t un-know it. You can’t move on from it.
You’re not “better.”
You’re just living. For today and the next day.

Tonight I told everyone I was taking yet another flight.
A February evening. Cold, but nothing unusual.
Taxi waiting out front.
I said I was going to New York. Nothing odd about that.

I had done the trip lots of times before. Forty times, maybe more, since Covid.

F***ing Covid.
We survived it, technically.
But parts of us didn’t.
Some people never came back.
Some businesses never reopened.
It was like trying to start an old engine in the dead of winter.
Some spluttered back to life. Others just coughed and stalled.

I told people I was recovering.
I said it like a fact.
Maybe I even believed it for a while.

It was more of a dead-cat bounce.

Funny how much of who we are is tied to what we do.
And when what we do stops making sense…
What’s left?

My eldest son was at the piano when I left. I kissed his head, like always, but I waited.
Just a second longer.
I needed eye contact. I needed him to see me.
I wanted to hold that look in the back of my mind, tucked behind everything else.

I went upstairs to the little one. His bed’s still broken.
I promised to fix it.
Work got in the way.
Stress. Emails. Everything else.

I waved to their mother. Said I’d text when I landed.
And the dog.
He stood on his hind legs and gave me one of his hugs.
Front paws on my chest, chin on my shoulder. And I nearly broke when he came for a second one.

I told the driver to let me off a few streets early.
Said I needed air.

I walked through the town centre.
Past the old Vaux brewery.
Just a car park now.
Blank space. Ghosts under asphalt. You used to be able to smell the hops all over the town centre. It was an acquired smell but part of us. In our work overalls. In our school uniforms. In our collective hair.

The sky was unnaturally clear.
A thousand stars blinking down like they knew something I didn’t.
Cold light.
Bright.
Sharp.

“The moon and the stars were the gifts you gave.”
The line came again. I didn’t want it.
It came anyway.

The coat felt heavier with every step.
Army surplus, thick cotton.
I bought it in Boston, at a store called Kenmore’s.

I realised afterwards it was similar to the one John Rambo wore in First Blood.
Tonight it feels so heavy.

I wondered if someone had already noticed the suitcase by my front door.
The phone left beside it. And my laptop bag.

I got to the sign,
Nil Desperandum, wrought in iron.
It means Never Despair.

But plenty of people do here, at this bridge.

And I have too. Despaired.
Quietly. Repeatedly.
Without anyone noticing.

This is a strong contrast to my nickname. It’s Giggles.

It followed me all through school until now.

Different, unrelated groups of people all called me that over the years. They all reached that conclusion about me.

Maybe there was a time the smile was authentic and met the eyes.

The streetlights seemed too bright
not warm, not comforting.
Exposing. Surgical.
Like the world had suddenly thrown open its eyes to watch.

And I moved.
No hesitation.
A clean vault. A final threshold crossed.

I felt my left ankle smash hard against the concrete lip as I went over.
A searing, blinding pain.
And then one of the weights in my pocket jerked loose,
slammed up into my face. It felt like the 10 lb one.
A crack of metal to bone.
White flash.
Blood.
Dazed.
Spinning.

No scream.
Just motion.
Tilting.

Head first.

Then wind.
So much wind.
Freezing. Rushing. Knifing.

And spinning.

The world narrowed to a single blur of air and weight and speed.
Momentum.
Faster.
Momentum.
Faster.
Faster.

A fleeting thought:
my children.

Seeing them born.

Their eyes.
The feel of their hands in mine.

And the moon and the stars, the gifts I tried to give them.

And now,
only this.

To the dark

And the endless skies.

Mark Gibson