Away
Original flash fiction
On the table there are two places set. I set them both every evening. One for me, one for him. Then I sit and eat my dinner looking at the empty seat opposite to keep his absence close to me. It’s a little routine I’ve fallen into. The place mat is jute, tan-coloured, with embroidered red trim, and I pair it with gold-tone cutlery, which I always polish before setting the place again. Rustic, you could call it.
I always eat in silence. I used to have some music on, or a Youtube video on my phone, but now I’m used to the sound of a single fork, a single knife, clinking against the plate, scraping against each other. Their little vibrations ring me into memory, the things that we gather from year to year, like blackberries from a roadside bush, pulped and baked and steaming flirtatiously on a windowsill.
The table’s by a window, so when I’m done eating I can turn my head and look out through the scuffed glass. A tree and a street light, reaching out, imploring the impoverished sky for connection. The sky darkens, the last of the heat departs, and the settled night will not lift, even with the coming of the sun.
When the tree is just a punctured silhouette I get up, go around the table and fold up his place mat, tuck it away in the drawer. I pick up the gold-tone knife and fork and wrap them in a velvet cloth and put them in the drawer too. I leave my place mat until morning, two become one, and endure the night.
By day you can get by, can’t you? Work, meetings, trains, buses, shops, the gym, the pub. Places of white noise and distraction. But I always reckon it’s important not to get too distracted. Like I say you need to keep the absence close to you, otherwise you’ll forget. That’s my fear anyway. So to avoid forgetting you give it form in the real world. Some people choose a necklace, or even a tattoo. I’d like to say I’ve gone with the jute place mat and the gold-tone cutlery for some poetic reason - like you can see the lack of someone better in an empty chair - but honestly, it’s because I had them already and I’m cheap. That being said, the last time I saw him we ate off these mats with this cutlery, my trademark mango chicken and salad. So I suppose there’s some resonance in that, honouring our last supper. And then there’s the hope aspect of it. You set the place, and maybe one day someone will come and fill it, like they’ve been there a thousand times before and they’ve just been away somewhere, working it out, doing their own remembering.