Trilby James

clue. And I feel… […] Sad. No, not sad. Worse than sad… I feel… […] Disappointed

Do you; have you ever actually felt any – guilt? Because it’s come as a bit of a surprise that um, that – you, one, I don’t, can’t actually feel it. Like I can’t get my body to do it, on its own, it’s not something I can generate somehow, like, I – I find myself having to actually summon it, trying to encourage myself, to summon it and even then I can’t do it, really, I can’t feel it. I thought it might be shock at first and then – grief or but I think I might not feel it. I can’t. I don’t. All I can feel is total joy, total – peace. I look at you and I sometimes actually make myself think of him, I force him into my head and I don’t feel guilty. What does that mean? What kind of person does that make me? (Pause.) Hm? Sometimes I think it’s because – what we have is love, meant to be. (Laughs.) That we love each other, yes, Mack, that is what I sometimes think. Is that ridiculous? And sometimes I even think that that love is so important that it is bigger, or equal to – what he did. That they are just two feelings, one is love and the other is despair and both just have an action. And that those actions are different but that somehow they are equal – does that make me a monster? I sat at his funeral looking at his parents and Benny but all I could think of, all I could feel – was you.

But then I look at you and I wonder if it’s actually there. I wonder if I added up the amount of minutes, hours, fucking days I have spent thinking about you, the amount of fucking longing I have done – if I added that up and weighed it against anything you have ever actually said… and – (Pause.)

But then you do the smallest thing you make me a cup of tea when I don’t ask, or you touch my hand really lightly in a room full of people and I think no, Sophie, don’t laugh – don’t laugh because it’s real and it’s so much more real because it’s unsaid and unspoken and un – un – un – it’s so much more real because I can’t touch it, because we can’t say it and I can’t see it, it’s so much more real because I don’t know if it’s there.

Pause. MACK doesn’t say anything.

Please say something. (Pause.) Please. Please tell me if…

She trails off unable to try any harder.