I bury my nose in my duvet. She bought me these
sheets. I can’t shake that from my mind. She bought them. Even though my
old ones were perfectly fine, she hated them. Too masculine. I’ve never
understood how bedding can have a gender. She went to Tesco and bought a
cheap set of sheets, pale pink in colour, adorned by sequinned
butterflies.
“Do you like them?” she grinned.
I smiled, because I didn’t really care.
I try to remember how long I’ve been here, cocooned
in a cocktail of my own sadness and questionable body odour. I hear the
faint sound of the ticking clock from that TV show coming through the
walls. The scrape of a bowl, the shuffle of a chair. I can almost see
Dan eating cereal in his pants at 3 o’ clock in the afternoon. He’ll be
in here in a bit. Knocking timidly on the door to bring food and to
check that I’m not dead.
“You alright mate?”
I reply wordlessly, hoping he’ll interpret my
gratitude through my guttural groans. He sighs and goes, leaving a bowl
on my night stand.
When he’s gone, I sniff the sheets. They don’t smell of her anymore. Just me.
She never showed me how to use the washing machine.
