I have noticed.

I’ve noticed how I miss the morning chats, coffee in bed together, not talking about you but talking about them, our guests, the dramas and scandals and characters. The deconstructing and unpacking, the judgements (loving) but also judgements that two people make cosied up in bed as the sun rises. Content with each other. Their superiority of togetherness. (Ha).

I’ve missed having An Other with whom to carry this load and host this party and luxuriate in this wonder. And enjoy.

I do not miss the hours you took from me when after sex you’d hate that I wanted to go and wanted me to stay while there was a party downstairs of friends and I wanted to be with them. I do not miss the punishment of that. The guilt-ridden leaving. The annoyance. The price you made me pay.

I miss the languid hot afternoons, naked here.

I don’t miss that look in your eye that said bad today and make me suffer the urgent disturbance of your presence on the terrace, in the kitchen, by the pool when sunglasses on I knew you were gone.

I do not miss the tantrums you threw when the house had emptied and it was just me and you and the children, when you would deal out the stored whipping as if you were a third child. Demanding.

I miss how you made me laugh.

I miss how you made everyone else laugh, too. And backgammon. And your arms around me when it was good and not awful. And how you would cook dinner for fifteen people as if it was nothing and how it was always delicious.

I do not miss your barbs and asides and jealousy and meanness. I do not miss your belly but I do miss your knees which were always funny.

This is the first summer of our non-aquintence. I notice these things.

Eleanor

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