"Butcher Boy?"

Stevie stands framed in the doorway, looking the way people do on Saturday evenings.  You can't help but get restless.

She's interrupting me as I carefully arrange 500 photographs in chronological order, looking for anything in the faces that might indicate why I would do that. The words are coming easy, but I work on the assumption that people easily impressed. I look up just as she pushes the hair out of my eyes.

If I was blind, I could maybe anticipate these signs. The shiver or the tension when we're talking.

"Why do you never send me letters any more?"

And briefly I stop, and wonder if there is perhaps a better place to go. We could go and crouch on the bridge and watch the cars buzzing beneath us, and speculate on where everyone was going. Or climb up the hill and wait for the streetlights to come on, rattling along the roads like dominoes.

I wonder if there are perhaps better things to do.

I wonder if there is perhaps a better place to start. A way to kiss without touching, or without making up.

I very nearly suggest it. Honestly, I do. But these are just my memories, and this will all take too long to explain, so I decide to close my eyes and let the words die.

Instead I sit in, watching the sun set on the opposite side of the playing fields. The house is like a fire when the sun sets, I almost always end up on my knees. And days like these will be the death of me.

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