It was the morning of May 1st 1996. That meant I had been thanking God for one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, for it was that many days since my first experience of it all; the experience where bashful cheeks mimic the brilliance of rushing blood; where butterflies transform into rhinos and begin stampeding around your stomach; where no amount of steam on your glasses succeeds in blurring the ethereal sculpture that glistens before you. It was that many days since I first laid eyes on our new next-door neighbour, Millie Taylor.
There hadn’t been a day since then where I had not laid eyes on her again. I liked her eyes because they did not change when everything else did. They stayed the same when her body stemmed from a heedless thirteen-year-old into a balletic gymnast. Or when her chapped lips went from smiling at me through two sets of windows, to laughing at me as I clambered out of one window and through the other. It was as if the icy blue shells of her irises had encased their patterns in a permanent Siberia.
Our parents did not get along, to say the least, and we were therefore forbidden from communication. This resulted in midnight tiptoeing through neatly trimmed grass, followed by the indecorous mount up to the bedroom window. Our windows acted as portals; portals that brought us into a world where, despite it being cool and dark outside, everything was ablaze; bright and warm.  And when the window shut, it locked us in a world that belonged entirely to ourselves, and better yet, it locked everybody else out. The lust for these portals dominated my thoughts through every waking moment; from blinking away the remnants of a perpetual slumber, right through to the grasp of a wobbly white window ledge.
The secrecy died as we grew. By fourteen, we were confident enough to let out unsubtle chuckles under the climbing frame of a nearby park. By seventeen, we would steal my Father’s car and revive the sleeping streets of Orkney as we swayed along the roads to the beat of late night radio.
This was up until May 1st 1996. To celebrate five consecutive years of laying eyes on each other, we went a walk along the cliffs. The entire day we spent, laughing, walking, laughing - stopping to breathe only when our lungs verged on implosion.  We discussed the future as if it were an unfinished painting, constructing a master plan to saturate the blankness with gleaming swirls of gold. We came to a halt as evening inched closer, and sat in silence whilst our eyes drifted up towards that canvas of lustrous smears, our skin still soaking in what remained of the Autumn sun before it was swallowed up for another night.
When we returned home she shattered my window. She shattered my window with no explanation... not that I needed an explanation. I needed tape. A fictitious glue that would mend my window with no trace of it ever being broken. This was not possible, for when a window shatters it can never be free from the scars that riddle their way through each futile fibre. The window was not replaceable either, because there is not one glass fitting service on the planet that offers a product which can restore the memories of a window that was not just a window, but a portal too.
“It’s alright, Oliver. If you think about it, nothing has changed. You can still see me through a shattered window. We can still spend time together in a room with a shattered window.”
Incorrect. I can still see her, yes, but staring at a portrait with a jagged frame makes for a far less exquisite piece of art. We can still spend time together, but gone is the protection from outsiders. Gone is the sense of ownership of a world that we created.
And now I am back at the cliffs where we had laughed so soon before. Everything is dark now, and the laughter we filled the air with has been replaced by a brutal silence. Hours I spend, crying, walking, screaming - not stopping to breathe as my lungs verge on implosion. Despite being numbed by the iciness of solitude, I am sweating. And yet my knees quiver and my taste buds dance with the saltiness of tears.
I keep walking in the hope that enough distance from the wreckage site will fade the imprints branded inside my skull. It doesn’t. The deranged images, twisted memories and afflicted thoughts only grow with each step, and with them grows my realisation of how meaningless a life is when it features the absence of the only thing you lived for.
Stopping at the most outward cliff edge, I question if it will hurt, but conclude that as being impossible. The portal inside my chest has already been broken, leaving only what lies on the outside eligible for injury; my numb, discoloured skin. Numb. Of course it won’t hurt.
I take a deep, elongated breath… so deep I almost feel the edge of my lungs scrape against the myriad of bloody crystal shards. I step forward where I am greeted by the spit of the furious white crashes beneath me. I barely acknowledge the taste of it, though; my mouth has grown immune to the bitterness of saltwater, but I take comfort in the knowledge that, at least I will be falling into something familiar.
With that in mind, I take another step and suddenly I am falling…
Falling...
Falling…
Shatter.It was the morning of May 1st 1996. That meant I had been thanking God for one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, for it was that many days since my first experience of it all; the experience where bashful cheeks mimic the brilliance of rushing blood; where butterflies transform into rhinos and begin stampeding around your stomach; where no amount of steam on your glasses succeeds in blurring the ethereal sculpture that glistens before you. It was that many days since I first laid eyes on our new next-door neighbour, Millie Taylor.

There hadn’t been a day since then where I had not laid eyes on her again. I liked her eyes because they did not change when everything else did. They stayed the same when her body stemmed from a heedless thirteen-year-old into a balletic gymnast. Or when her chapped lips went from smiling at me through two sets of windows, to laughing at me as I clambered out of one window and through the other. It was as if the icy blue shells of her irises had encased their patterns in a permanent Siberia.
Our parents did not get along, to say the least, and we were therefore forbidden from communication. This resulted in midnight tiptoeing through neatly trimmed grass, followed by the indecorous mount up to the bedroom window. Our windows acted as portals; portals that brought us into a world where, despite it being cool and dark outside, everything was ablaze; bright and warm.  And when the window shut, it locked us in a world that belonged entirely to ourselves, and better yet, it locked everybody else out. The lust for these portals dominated my thoughts through every waking moment; from blinking away the remnants of a perpetual slumber, right through to the grasp of a wobbly white window ledge.
The secrecy died as we grew. By fourteen, we were confident enough to let out unsubtle chuckles under the climbing frame of a nearby park. By seventeen, we would steal my Father’s car and revive the sleeping streets of Orkney as we swayed along the roads to the beat of late night radio.
This was up until May 1st 1996. To celebrate five consecutive years of laying eyes on each other, we went a walk along the cliffs. The entire day we spent, laughing, walking, laughing - stopping to breathe only when our lungs verged on implosion.  We discussed the future as if it were an unfinished painting, constructing a master plan to saturate the blankness with gleaming swirls of gold. We came to a halt as evening inched closer, and sat in silence whilst our eyes drifted up towards that canvas of lustrous smears, our skin still soaking in what remained of the Autumn sun before it was swallowed up for another night.
When we returned home she shattered my window. She shattered my window with no explanation... not that I needed an explanation. I needed tape. A fictitious glue that would mend my window with no trace of it ever being broken. This was not possible, for when a window shatters it can never be free from the scars that riddle their way through each futile fibre. The window was not replaceable either, because there is not one glass fitting service on the planet that offers a product which can restore the memories of a window that was not just a window, but a portal too.
“It’s alright, Oliver. If you think about it, nothing has changed. You can still see me through a shattered window. We can still spend time together in a room with a shattered window.”
Incorrect. I can still see her, yes, but staring at a portrait with a jagged frame makes for a far less exquisite piece of art. We can still spend time together, but gone is the protection from outsiders. Gone is the sense of ownership of a world that we created.
And now I am back at the cliffs where we had laughed so soon before. Everything is dark now, and the laughter we filled the air with has been replaced by a brutal silence. Hours I spend, crying, walking, screaming - not stopping to breathe as my lungs verge on implosion. Despite being numbed by the iciness of solitude, I am sweating. And yet my knees quiver and my taste buds dance with the saltiness of tears.
I keep walking in the hope that enough distance from the wreckage site will fade the imprints branded inside my skull. It doesn’t. The deranged images, twisted memories and afflicted thoughts only grow with each step, and with them grows my realisation of how meaningless a life is when it features the absence of the only thing you lived for.
Stopping at the most outward cliff edge, I question if it will hurt, but conclude that as being impossible. The portal inside my chest has already been broken, leaving only what lies on the outside eligible for injury; my numb, discoloured skin. Numb. Of course it won’t hurt.
I take a deep, elongated breath… so deep I almost feel the edge of my lungs scrape against the myriad of bloody crystal shards. I step forward where I am greeted by the spit of the furious white crashes beneath me. I barely acknowledge the taste of it, though; my mouth has grown immune to the bitterness of saltwater, but I take comfort in the knowledge that, at least I will be falling into something familiar.
With that in mind, I take another step and suddenly I am falling…
Falling...
Falling…
Shatter.It was the morning of May 1st 1996. That meant I had been thanking God for one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, for it was that many days since my first experience of it all; the experience where bashful cheeks mimic the brilliance of rushing blood; where butterflies transform into rhinos and begin stampeding around your stomach; where no amount of steam on your glasses succeeds in blurring the ethereal sculpture that glistens before you. It was that many days since I first laid eyes on our new next-door neighbour, Millie Taylor.
There hadn’t been a day since then where I had not laid eyes on her again. I liked her eyes because they did not change when everything else did. They stayed the same when her body stemmed from a heedless thirteen-year-old into a balletic gymnast. Or when her chapped lips went from smiling at me through two sets of windows, to laughing at me as I clambered out of one window and through the other. It was as if the icy blue shells of her irises had encased their patterns in a permanent Siberia.
Our parents did not get along, to say the least, and we were therefore forbidden from communication. This resulted in midnight tiptoeing through neatly trimmed grass, followed by the indecorous mount up to the bedroom window. Our windows acted as portals; portals that brought us into a world where, despite it being cool and dark outside, everything was ablaze; bright and warm.  And when the window shut, it locked us in a world that belonged entirely to ourselves, and better yet, it locked everybody else out. The lust for these portals dominated my thoughts through every waking moment; from blinking away the remnants of a perpetual slumber, right through to the grasp of a wobbly white window ledge.
The secrecy died as we grew. By fourteen, we were confident enough to let out unsubtle chuckles under the climbing frame of a nearby park. By seventeen, we would steal my Father’s car and revive the sleeping streets of Orkney as we swayed along the roads to the beat of late night radio.
This was up until May 1st 1996. To celebrate five consecutive years of laying eyes on each other, we went a walk along the cliffs. The entire day we spent, laughing, walking, laughing - stopping to breathe only when our lungs verged on implosion.  We discussed the future as if it were an unfinished painting, constructing a master plan to saturate the blankness with gleaming swirls of gold. We came to a halt as evening inched closer, and sat in silence whilst our eyes drifted up towards that canvas of lustrous smears, our skin still soaking in what remained of the Autumn sun before it was swallowed up for another night.
When we returned home she shattered my window. She shattered my window with no explanation... not that I needed an explanation. I needed tape. A fictitious glue that would mend my window with no trace of it ever being broken. This was not possible, for when a window shatters it can never be free from the scars that riddle their way through each futile fibre. The window was not replaceable either, because there is not one glass fitting service on the planet that offers a product which can restore the memories of a window that was not just a window, but a portal too.
“It’s alright, Oliver. If you think about it, nothing has changed. You can still see me through a shattered window. We can still spend time together in a room with a shattered window.”
Incorrect. I can still see her, yes, but staring at a portrait with a jagged frame makes for a far less exquisite piece of art. We can still spend time together, but gone is the protection from outsiders. Gone is the sense of ownership of a world that we created.
And now I am back at the cliffs where we had laughed so soon before. Everything is dark now, and the laughter we filled the air with has been replaced by a brutal silence. Hours I spend, crying, walking, screaming - not stopping to breathe as my lungs verge on implosion. Despite being numbed by the iciness of solitude, I am sweating. And yet my knees quiver and my taste buds dance with the saltiness of tears.
I keep walking in the hope that enough distance from the wreckage site will fade the imprints branded inside my skull. It doesn’t. The deranged images, twisted memories and afflicted thoughts only grow with each step, and with them grows my realisation of how meaningless a life is when it features the absence of the only thing you lived for.
Stopping at the most outward cliff edge, I question if it will hurt, but conclude that as being impossible. The portal inside my chest has already been broken, leaving only what lies on the outside eligible for injury; my numb, discoloured skin. Numb. Of course it won’t hurt.
I take a deep, elongated breath… so deep I almost feel the edge of my lungs scrape against the myriad of bloody crystal shards. I step forward where I am greeted by the spit of the furious white crashes beneath me. I barely acknowledge the taste of it, though; my mouth has grown immune to the bitterness of saltwater, but I take comfort in the knowledge that, at least I will be falling into something familiar.
With that in mind, I take another step and suddenly I am falling…
Falling...
Falling…
Shatter.It was the morning of May 1st 1996. That meant I had been thanking God for one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, for it was that many days since my first experience of it all; the experience where bashful cheeks mimic the brilliance of rushing blood; where butterflies transform into rhinos and begin stampeding around your stomach; where no amount of steam on your glasses succeeds in blurring the ethereal sculpture that glistens before you. It was that many days since I first laid eyes on our new next-door neighbour, Millie Taylor.
There hadn’t been a day since then where I had not laid eyes on her again. I liked her eyes because they did not change when everything else did. They stayed the same when her body stemmed from a heedless thirteen-year-old into a balletic gymnast. Or when her chapped lips went from smiling at me through two sets of windows, to laughing at me as I clambered out of one window and through the other. It was as if the icy blue shells of her irises had encased their patterns in a permanent Siberia.
Our parents did not get along, to say the least, and we were therefore forbidden from communication. This resulted in midnight tiptoeing through neatly trimmed grass, followed by the indecorous mount up to the bedroom window. Our windows acted as portals; portals that brought us into a world where, despite it being cool and dark outside, everything was ablaze; bright and warm.  And when the window shut, it locked us in a world that belonged entirely to ourselves, and better yet, it locked everybody else out. The lust for these portals dominated my thoughts through every waking moment; from blinking away the remnants of a perpetual slumber, right through to the grasp of a wobbly white window ledge.
The secrecy died as we grew. By fourteen, we were confident enough to let out unsubtle chuckles under the climbing frame of a nearby park. By seventeen, we would steal my Father’s car and revive the sleeping streets of Orkney as we swayed along the roads to the beat of late night radio.
This was up until May 1st 1996. To celebrate five consecutive years of laying eyes on each other, we went a walk along the cliffs. The entire day we spent, laughing, walking, laughing - stopping to breathe only when our lungs verged on implosion.  We discussed the future as if it were an unfinished painting, constructing a master plan to saturate the blankness with gleaming swirls of gold. We came to a halt as evening inched closer, and sat in silence whilst our eyes drifted up towards that canvas of lustrous smears, our skin still soaking in what remained of the Autumn sun before it was swallowed up for another night.
When we returned home she shattered my window. She shattered my window with no explanation... not that I needed an explanation. I needed tape. A fictitious glue that would mend my window with no trace of it ever being broken. This was not possible, for when a window shatters it can never be free from the scars that riddle their way through each futile fibre. The window was not replaceable either, because there is not one glass fitting service on the planet that offers a product which can restore the memories of a window that was not just a window, but a portal too.
“It’s alright, Oliver. If you think about it, nothing has changed. You can still see me through a shattered window. We can still spend time together in a room with a shattered window.”
Incorrect. I can still see her, yes, but staring at a portrait with a jagged frame makes for a far less exquisite piece of art. We can still spend time together, but gone is the protection from outsiders. Gone is the sense of ownership of a world that we created.
And now I am back at the cliffs where we had laughed so soon before. Everything is dark now, and the laughter we filled the air with has been replaced by a brutal silence. Hours I spend, crying, walking, screaming - not stopping to breathe as my lungs verge on implosion. Despite being numbed by the iciness of solitude, I am sweating. And yet my knees quiver and my taste buds dance with the saltiness of tears.
I keep walking in the hope that enough distance from the wreckage site will fade the imprints branded inside my skull. It doesn’t. The deranged images, twisted memories and afflicted thoughts only grow with each step, and with them grows my realisation of how meaningless a life is when it features the absence of the only thing you lived for.
Stopping at the most outward cliff edge, I question if it will hurt, but conclude that as being impossible. The portal inside my chest has already been broken, leaving only what lies on the outside eligible for injury; my numb, discoloured skin. Numb. Of course it won’t hurt.
I take a deep, elongated breath… so deep I almost feel the edge of my lungs scrape against the myriad of bloody crystal shards. I step forward where I am greeted by the spit of the furious white crashes beneath me. I barely acknowledge the taste of it, though; my mouth has grown immune to the bitterness of saltwater, but I take comfort in the knowledge that, at least I will be falling into something familiar.
With that in mind, I take another step and suddenly I am falling…
Falling...
Falling…
Shatter.