the blank face was the best face mostly, it was growls and groans and declarations of discontent
“can’t afford a pot to piss in“
fourteen years at a facing desk my morning welcome
a daily calendar of awfulness a suicide on ice
“what do you expect when they drill holes
in your nose as a child just so’s you can breathe“
I found the light switch by accident
groping around under the desk for a dropped biro fingers brushed some soft stuff. Might have been fluff
when I surfaced the whole bloody room was ablaze tea room traffic at standstill. rubbernecking typists. the frozen tundra of collective disbelief. pajestic. (caught between majestic and pacifistic. Just trying to find that word that wouldn’t end up in a donation to the bollock box on the team leader website).
actors change their look with radical hairstyle redesign. develop becoming unrecognisable from the outside in.
no-one knew her. No-one had known her before. except me.
that first time we met was in the dark.
on an unlit works minibus. Where she talked a nervous sort of dirge that made me laugh straight away.
even though I’d never seen it in daylight. I knew it.
had heard it. her smile.
she said her name at school had been guts. colloquialised from misery guts. her retort to accusations of grimness was “it’s nice to be horrible“
I married her the week after the minibus. on a remote hillside in wales. sometimes the hills were purple. next day grey and green.
we honeymooned in the office. for fourteen years
then we died. both together, same day. buried in facing graves.
we had paid into a joint funeral plan direct from our wages every week for fourteen years.
the office had a whip round to cover the undertaker shortfall.
in all them years, no-one ever knew we were a couple.
© Gary Boswell 2025
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