Remembering Carmen (23 page)

This morning I trace a pattern on its surface with my finger. What I trace, Carmen, is a hieroglyph of emptiness, an alphabet of loss. I draw nothing in nothing, an extravagant loop of vacancy. I have lost you, my love. I have become the votary of your absence.

I get to my feet again. I feel the cold glass of the window pane against my cheek. It will come. It will come soon. The pointless, sentimental, self-indulgent salt bead that falls on the white gloss of the sill, drying quickly in the sun that now fills my lonely watch-tower.

A gull detaches itself from the tall superstructure at the south end of the bridge. It flies, slow and magnificent, across the whole field of my vision. It is graceful, beautiful.

But look, it is gone.

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© Nicholas Murray, 2003

ISBN 978-1-78172-136-0

The right of Nicholas Murray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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