Drinking poison and expecting someone else to die

You wish you had never let him touch the small of your back because you know how that ends but you're not accustomed to taking precautions and you were never that good at predicting the weather or what's going to happen the day after tomorrow anyway.

So you decide to forget it and instead sit for hours on a rooftop with a friend who's beautiful like a model from the seventies and who makes days seem lighter and nights seem darker and more vivid. You drink Pimm's but you didn't remember how much it tastes like alcohol so you switch to rosé and get accidentally drunk. When the conversation turns animated you both nonchalantly smash wine glasses on the floor, the thin pieces bouncing off the brown bricks.

When you discuss love or the lack of it someone starts firing fireworks behind the rooftops of Angel from somewhere near Highbury and Islington and you find it funny mostly because the fireworks they are sending across the sky are the cheap ones that last for fifty seconds and look even more artificial than usual next to the cloudy trails planes leave behind when approaching the City airport.

So you look over the rooftops and see Barbican and the ugly towers where the bankers work day and night and you have a casual but short conversation about how much apartments cost in London and how with a week's rent you could buy almost anything. You both wonder why ex-council estate flats have such ugly windows but who really even has a choice in this city? Then you remember how far away from home you are but try to remember that you don't miss anything else than the people you loved and still do. And you both silently thank every small decision you have ever made, every brave sentence you've ever let slip out of your mouth, every misquoted Gandhi line and every night at the weird bar down the street that has led you to this exact moment.

You notice that your friend looks so beautiful in her boyfriend's quilted coat that fits her small frame in an unnaturally nice way and wonder if she's as happy as she seems or if she just carefully hides every moment of self-doubt that she experiences when his Parisian accent drowns away the words.

And you curse the fact that you still don't know if the touch on the small of your back or anything that ensued from that ever meant anything to the hand that you let closer to your bones and you curse your own heart even more severely for not knowing what the hell it wants this time around.

And you come home and send someone you once loved a message because he still thinks you're beautiful and way too skinny and clever and wise and you don't agree with any of his nonsense but still miss him in a way that you would never admit to anyone. You end the message with a denial that sounds poetic but is actually just true: kind of don't know what it all means and you write it because it's the truth - it's not harsh and it's not ugly and it's just the truth. The truth is never ugly, it's the truth.

And you look in the mirror and the bruises are still there and you wonder if any of the conversations ever really mattered or if you were a mere pitstop because that has happened to you before and you see no exception in this storyline. You notice the only thing the Diet Coke and caffeine pill menu is doing to your body is peach fuzz on your cheeks and the nape of your neck and new dark circles around your eyes. You try to be angry at yourself and at the world but you're mostly just exhausted and confused and no-one ever made anything beautiful out of confusion did they.

So you decide it's better to concentrate on analyzing the rise of China for the rest of the hours before Saturday morning comes knocking like a lost Jehova's witness who never understood that you don't want to be saved and you never did.

And you promise yourself to never think about that touch on the small of your back again because it was a fleeting moment that probably did not matter anyway, a sunstroke that lasted a month in an apartment in Central London. Tiny and overpriced.