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Pins and Needles
It was just pins and needles in her toes. I told my partner it’ll fade away. Nothing to worry about. She trusted me.
Then today we went for breakfast at this small café around the corner. Their menu fits into one single page and they serve everything with mashed peas and parsley. Everything on your plate splattered in green. Walls and chairs are green too. For a calm, upbeat weekend breakfast feeling.
My partner, she’s stirring the beans on her plate without eating. Her eyes on the waitress serving a sausage roll behind me. Her eyes jumping to the water bottle on the table and then back to her plate. I try to make her laugh but only get a stretched smile back.
Four months ago we moved into this new flat facing a park. It comes in handy when after a shower you don’t have to shut the blinds because the neighbour in the front building peeks at your wet towel. The outside is a changing canvas that follows the seasons. With branches sticking so high up you feel they’re knocking at your living room windows. The screaming teenagers who have missed their bus in the middle of the night at the bus stop downstairs, they came with the mortgage too.
We got the keys, we ate dinner on the floor. Then we were covered in dust for four months. Random strangers leaving muddy footprints all over the floor. They’d walk in holding a drill, carrying printed…