Wave from the back and I will see you, eating dry pasta by the handful in the kitchen, siphoning swirls from the bag to the sequin box you kept in your bedroom for us, small bit by small bit until we got told off. There is the outline of the DVD player with two inputs, there is the argument over who would be Sandy. There is Shark Boy And Lava Girl on DVD, paper 3D glasses. There is Charlotte’s Web, the first confrontation with death in the cinema carpark, Dad crouched down, Tango ice blast spit.

The old drive way bricks looked like this, but the coating was starting to peel off into bubbles when I sat there alone at ???. My sister walking towards me and in the corner of hers she will remember me crying. I could not stomach those fish and chips knowing that bad news would come when Mum got home. My Grandma apologised so many times for the traffic and the ??? minutes I was sat there alone, confronting it in a Primary school uniform.

In the deepest centre will be my mum’s voice, the smell of our living room that I don’t register but would know, the landline number. Prayer said that it never goes, bargaining to keep hold of last night’s karaoke, falling asleep on a big question of what matters and what doesn’t. Sometimes I stroke my ribs with my thumb and tell myself gently, “Not everything needs to be remembered”, but a louder voice, the one in the diaries and ticket stubs and archives, yells “Yes, it does” and I feel my heart pound in a real way.

I would change my profile picture to an image of a neon sign from some website. “I heart ??????”, type out the real name in code. I’d sit online waiting for people to guess it. The click of the mouse, the sound of the internet being turned off, lines from Simpsons episodes watched on my iPod under the duvet.

Somewhere your smile is there and the way I grew to love it – the first time I ever grew to love someone in that way. I thought then that the day I found out about you and her would be a black mark, but don’t worry, 16 is a healthy mush. I think of its torture with a fondness.

I watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind white knuckled then. I saw it again the other day and whispered “sorry” to her, somewhere in there. I have let so much slip.

But not this though.

In a protected groove, my aunty’s kitchen lives and it smells like the best burger I ever ate. It flickers now with whatever that kind of sadness looks like. The day, a few months ago, when I said to my mum that I wished I’d had the chance to know her and her know me as an adult, it is folded up and tucked in with it. Where do we house the myths we collectively made? I’ll call up the doctor and ask him to point out the bit where the heaviest metaphors live, where on the picture understanding is found for the story my nana told me then, the double rainbow on her death day, and the way I will never not see one and think first and only of her – emotion over sight, ask the doctor which wire fires faster.

The phone call when you said you were leaving is gone but in a pile of the floor is the feeling of the pillow I was running my hands through, the stars of my bedding, the burn in my throat when I thought I’d be sick, how claustrophobic the car felt the next day when I was waiting and waiting for it to not be true. A fact I know is that is was. A lesson I, maybe, learnt is that it always had to be. All of that is in the picture. You will never fully be gone.

As my Grandad let go, he saw a map on the blank wall opposite. We never figured out where it was. There are things you will know till the end, there are already lines here that the last lights will flash down. I need to start trusting that it won’t be the hurt that holds tightest.

There is so much I will not write about yet, but I guess you’ve seen it now.

The rot I expected is not there. I took a moment before I hit download. Cigarette burns. I thought I’d see cigarette burns mapped with scorched finger prints and I’d recognise each one. I thought there would be paths cut through, pieces lost in the rattling box. I thought I’d stare for hours at the blackest bits and try to figure out where the bruise is but she’s waving, eating dry pasta in the kitchen. Strawberry milkshake on the bridge in Newcastle. £150 roll of cash in a charity shop bag with my name on it. Old man singing ‘Always On My Mind’ in the Parkmore. Cowboy book in the pub, in love. Carpet burned knees and Rocky Horror songs. Sophie’s star necklace. TGI Friday frozen gummy worms on birthdays. The plot of the ‘novel’ I wrote as a kid, the skill of a sentence. Blonde On Blonde, ‘Chelsea Hotel No.1’. Keaton Henson’s garden. Snails in Paris, alone. Lines in my Grandma’s carpet, Cornetto’s at 3pm, the armchair, sucking chocolate limes, teeth clagged with eclairs, metal spoon hitting against the glass jug, mixing the mint sauce, Sarah mixing the gravy. Sarah dancing tipsy in the kitchen in a t-shirt with her own face on it. Mother’s Day 2023 and the cards for mum and me. The boldest text I ever sent – and the hell it led to. There are bad bits and losses but it cannot be it all. I will stare at the rippling and think mostly, ‘there is a lot there’.