Raven Sowl, Recycled Hearts

Know this; I loved him.

Honestly, he wasn’t the best for me- but love chooses to ignore the brain. There was no comparison or doubt, or unknown insecurities about our relationship; It was pure, untainted.

Unrequited perfection.

We met when we were young; children in the same classroom. It was the year of pigtails, knee high socks and flat caps for school boys.

Every time I close my eyes I see him; my tiny best friend still stood there in his little blue blazer and shorts. That silly flat cap always falling off his head as he pushed it back up straight.

I can still remember pulling it off his head every year, and throwing it around like my ragdoll while he, pretending to be as strong and as agile as any pre-school boy, told me silly little lies of how he was going to tell on me. He never would, but I believed him.

I believed every word back then. I believed his every word for seven thousand, three hundred and four days.

And I would keep believing them, long past their sell by date.

When I think back to his younger self, I think back to school, I think of all the lessons that they taught us; How to read and write and listen and speak. How to make our presence in a room and how to address others with that presence. In my case however, they mostly spent twenty-five minutes of a lesson shouting at Elliott Parkins, and his rowdy bunch of future criminals.

There are few teachers who I can remember from my academic days; Mrs Charlie who got suspended for having an affair with fifteen-year-old Tyson Utter-dale, Mr Dickson who slurped every time he finished a sentence. Most faces never stuck, and their lessons faded into my teenage years of pop music and sleek straightened hair. Some lessons I can still see clearly- how to write a love sonnet in the style of Shakespeare, and how to apply pi to the diameter to get the circumference of a circle.

It was all trivial mathematical bullshit.

I could swear at the head of education about the importance of teaching subjects that mattered more to humans and not scholars. Lessons that equipped you to pay bills, get a mortgage…

Lessons that help you deal with death.

I should have marched right up to the secretary of state for education, and shake him hard, threaten him with desperate pleas because I knew how it would benefit growing, vulnerable minds.

I knew it would have benefitted vulnerable me.

Maybe I’m just too optimistic. Maybe I need to realise that my actions weren’t of a conditioned, and controlled thought process. That I couldn’t blame mental illness for any of this.

Maybe I’m just crawling back into my fantasy land, where I would know these answers and he would still be alive.

I must be realistic though. After all, the subject wasn’t as simple as math- no nine times table would affect me, or prepare me for Life’s unexpected cruelty. No, this subject was much more complex- like a sick, twisted, game of poker…

Some of my former pupils deserved the cruelty- Life’s hand played the justice card for the likes of Bobby Newman who would be in prison three years after we split up for Christmas, for Grievous Bodily Harm. And Dillan Hardees, don’t even ask; he tried to rob the local supermarket, with a water pistol he had spray painted black.

He had been sentenced down for five years; Dumb Shit.

It was a said fact, that every one of my small friends would eventually feel that inevitable sting of life’s game cards coming into play.

I don’t remember most of their names either, but I remember the small few who would avoid this cruelty; who got dealt royal flushes and straight Aces.

Others became average, fitting into society with their straight set, or two pairs. Not hitting or missing or gaining the gamble; just calling it when they were safe. When life was content.

I always thought of myself as one of these; I knew the cards well, I knew what to avoid and the right and wrongs of Life’s game. However, I was lucky, and always had my right-hand dealer who would slyly slip my cards to me, and organise them in a way which kept me safe and secure.

And it was because of that; I fell hard for my card dealer; that stupid boy in the slanted flat cap; Mark Grimes.

It still hits me now like a bullet to the side of my brain as I sit thinking about it. As I dream and fumble through what could have happened if he had stayed.

What game would we be playing now?

Would he still be alive if I didn’t love him?