I Let You Go

My steps feel lighter now and I realize it’s because I’m running toward something, and not away from it.

Such a small impact on the world, yet the very centre of my own.

Five years of someone's life is too much to lose over a throwaway comment.

Gradually, without my noticing, my grief has changed shape; from a raw, jagged pain that won't be silenced to a dull, rounded ache I'm able to lock away at the back of my mind.

Freeze or reheat. Thinking of you. I still don’t know who it’s from. Many of the condolence cards that arrived after my parents’ deaths came with stories of the cars they’d sold over the years. Keys handed to over-confident teens and over-anxious parents. Two-seater sports cars traded for family-friendly estates. Cars to celebrate promotions, big birthdays, retirements. My parents played a part in many different stories.

You must remember that he was a boy. That he had a mother. And that her heart is breaking.

Everything has changed. The instant the car slid across the wet tarmac, my whole life changed. I can see everything clearly, as though I am standing on the sidelines. I can't go on like this.

They speak to each other through the magistrate, like warring children communicating through a parent, their words are extravagantly emotive illustrated with flamboyant gestures that are wasted on the empty court room

It’s reactive, not proactive. We shouldn’t be sitting back, waiting for intelligence to come to us: we should be out there looking for it.

They reach the quiet street where home lies just around the corner, its seductive warmth a welcome sight.

In the time he’d been a copper, political correctness had reached a point where anything remotely personal had to be skirted around. In a few years’ time people wouldn’t be able to talk at all.