This Is The Way I Go To Bed Alone by Matthew Curlewis

To an observer trying to analyse what has happened, it may look like nothing’s changed. It’s still just me, my blue pyjamas, my bed by the window looking out over the water, and the crack in the wall – still not fixed. And yes, it could be said this is the same as the way I went to bed five years ago. Nothing in the description has changed, except my blue pyjamas now are faded and worn.

What the observer can’t see however, if they missed the five years in between, is the coming and going of you. They would miss those initial anxious nights, me trying to avoid glancing at the phone, while waiting for it to ring. They would miss those first few attempts at home cooking that thankfully, instead of ending badly, simply devolved into laughter, sweat, and ecstatic intertwinings. They would miss the appearance of your toothbrush, and then soon afterwards the arrival of boxes of your possessions, including your favourite wooden cabinet you’d rescued from the street during a snowstorm. Not to mention of course the breakfasts, snacks and readings in bed, the newspapers, the odd socks getting eaten by the washing machine, and then the years of us doing everything together, some disagreements, a lot more laughter, our pizza, vodka & movie nights – but I digress: how is it possible to describe to an outsider what was us? They would miss your beauty / wisdom / wry observations / changes of hair colour / intractability… and those unexpected moments of utter clarity and transcendence. And of course, thankfully, they would miss the anguish, the roller coaster months of pain, the recovery times full of hope, and how your body turned

into a battlefield.

They would miss the stench, the bandages and ointments, the packages and packages of pills and pills and pills. They would miss your sweat and sunken eyes and the way I would stare into them, trying so hard to find you within your fading. And they would miss the reddish-orange light flickering and flashing off the water and into the mirror, off the street and onto your skin, they would miss the impossibility of the vehicle’s siren that finally took you away from here, into the night, and deep into silence.

And they would miss all our friends tenderly, delicately, eventually helping to divest me of all your things. Holding me, making me cups of tea while carefully, quietly behind my back, little by little lessening the presence of you. Laughing with me, joking with me, catching me at those times I couldn’t anymore and could only collapse. But all the while somehow easing me back from the place of us, to the achievable, the possible place of me.

Seeing it now, looking at that crack in the wall, I’m sort of glad we never got around to fixing it together – it reminds me of you. But not in a bad way. My pyjamas are really thin at the knees and their blue has devolved into more of a distant grey… But now, when people ask me, at least I know how to reduce the situation down to what is real and right in front of me and inescapable.

This is the way I go to bed alone.

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Since growing up in Australia, Matthew Curlewis has worked as a performer-designer-writer on four continents. At his organisation Amsterdam Writers, founded in 2009, he runs the workshops: Writers’ Stretch & Tone and Storytelling for Academics. His works have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Blue Pepper, Bright Flash Literary Review, Blume Illustrated and Capital Q.

Amsterdam Writers

amsterdamwriters.com

Bright Side Writings

matthewcurlewis.substack.com