Last May

5 am and dawn already but of the tired worn and wizened sort, and of course there were nightingales, you wouldn’t take an Uber, didn’t trust them you said.

We walked with teeth chattering, arguing about the best place to find a cab, Dean Street a wasteland of rubbish trucks and scattered drunks, everyone else with somewhere better to be.

The night moonless, above us, a lone star or planet, I never could tell which, Orion’s belt or the plough or Venus or Mars, which one you settle on depending if you’re the fighting type or not, and me pointing and you calling it magic, not thinking to think of death in the way you never did, and I never could understand you because of.

Later in the cab you can’t remember your address and my postcode becomes an uncertain thing swimming away and you duck your head down low and hand me a tenner as you reach to for the handle.

Later still, I will not be able to find anywhere to spend it.