As it did, as it always would, the copper haze of a Septembers’ morning made him think of her. Against all wishes, he had woken just before dawn. The velvet darkness of night was beginning to flirt with shades of fiery hazel. Sunlight, cast like shards of silk, gently fumigated around the four bare walls of Tiernan Blake’s silent apartment. How long have I slept, he thought. It was hard to tell. The fading glow of a bedside candle breathed its final breath, releasing its ghost from its wick, before helplessly dissipating into nothing.
Tiernan felt the lush blanket of weightlessness one feels just after they’ve opened their eyes from a long, deep sleep. Neither conscious or un, neither here nor there, an ineffable cosmic bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dreamers; somewhere wonderful, just outside the reach of realities slow drone. He closed his eyes again, and thought of anything but her; A knowingly futile act, especially upon the crest of Autumn. He dreamt of Jesmond dene. What began as sleepy pictures of stretching grassy fields, slowly blurred into the warm emerald hue of her loving iris. The hearty phrase of a Mistle Thrush’s song secretly recast itself into the dance of her laughter. And the run of the water, endlessly pledging to move on, stood still. He walked closer until he could see his pale toes in the streams motionless reflection. Then he heard her voice, a mirror of his: You can make it without ever even trying.
He often thought that such a dream was the only thing he had ever truly committed to; perhaps the only thing he had ever loved. He was faithful to the dream, never abusing its inconsistencies, never challenging its feathered romance. Tiernan wondered why something so painful gave him such immediate comfort. Why in times of insurmountable despair, it was the thought of such a cruel tale which held him from meeting his end. All this. All this, for one meagre moment, when he looked to a girl, and she looked back for just a second too long.
He woke. The sun a little higher, the wind a little stronger. Perhaps I should get up, he thought. He darn’t entertain the inevitable fate of his sleeping mind anymore than he already had. It was Sunday. The proud old oak, with its wrinkled face, ill with dignity, shivered by the window. Atop the crooked tiling of the out-shed, moss which had held its ground since Tiernan had known it, was ripped from its roots and sent flying to the wet turf below. A mile away, upon Ingoe hill, Henry, the one-eyed Border Collie with his ragged black and white coat and collection of war scars is chained to a rotting outpost, cursing the racket with his signature barren yelp. Hours north, a young Blue-tit nestles deep within the cracks of the old Roman wall, terrified by the relentless growl of air which marches on in search of victims. And England, on this strange early-autumn morn, looks upon the cold command of nature, and hides.
By Matteo Addis
Me, Myself and Why 