A DECADE AGO

Why was she in my dream?
She began by saying she’d got a big house in the best part of town and moved on to wanting to share a hotel room with me.
I was kneeling in the mud by Club:UK on Stokes Croft making a figure out of pipe cleaners when she knelt down beside me.
‘Hello,’ I said.
She looked at me the way she had ten years ago when she told me she was leaving, that she didn’t want to be with me anymore.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘I’m making a figure out of pipe cleaners.’
The young boy standing behind her said, ‘I could tell that’s what you were doing.’
‘Where do you live,’ she said.
I pointed to a high building. We stood up together for a better look. We were taller than I remembered.
She was very beautiful. I wondered what it might’ve been like if we’d stayed together, had the children we talked about.
Did she think as bad of me now as she did back then? That mess...threats, a whole month without seeing her, it was awful...she called me when the time was up...what could I say? I agreed to meet was when she told me she was seeing someone else.
In the hotel room she tried to kiss me. I thought of her breath, moved out the way. Her cheeks a reddish brown, hair pulled back up into a bun.
Already I'd burnt her letters so I asked her to leave, said it was too late even a decade ago.