I flew away on a rare clear blue day. Towards the land of Antonio, Valentine, Romeo, creations tangled in the language of banishment, passion and despair.
Edging towards the albino coast, breaker of storms and smugglers, hunting ground for traffickers of shells and slaves, I surfed the drifting memories that most British children harbour – Whitsun half-terms, a new swimsuit, sandcastles and burial pits ploughed into a grainy, grey shore.
But on this breathtaking clear blue day, I flew straight over Beachy Head, its barber-shop lighthouse standing sentinel against matchbox boats and ghosts, and its clarity excised a gasp from my throat.
He flew away too, on a day full of blues, excusing himself with a step over the pure chalk cliff.
He loved Shakespeare, those rich characters formed from foreign heat and light. Prospero, Proteus, pounds of flesh. When we knew him, before he bowed out, he was a shameless, silver-tongued Mercutio. He loved words. He delivered them in a voice that could make the angels weep. His actions spoke louder.
In dreams, I fall. I fly and fall. You’re supposed to wake up before impact but sometimes I don’t and I feel my own life crash out of me. They say it’s the most humane way to die after gunshot, the scattering of life’s coil between the rocks and thundering waves. Except for those whose dreams may come. We are such stuff.
I had weeks of nightmares after I heard. I stood at the edge of the sea and looked down the vertiginous white precipice, letting my eyes fall to the far beneath, fearful for the one step forward, faltering or flagrant, from which there is no return. Every night, I awoke with a cry. Not for the act or the will behind it. That was his to own. But for some unspoken latency, the part of me that could follow suit.
They’ll suppose his mind was disturbed. Perhaps not. Daniel Stern said that suicides were God’s graduate students.
How beautiful the coast as I fly away. Far away.
