Just this once, twice, forever.
I’ve been thinking, maybe we could get back together. I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve been surprisingly happy marooned here on what we’ve named Armadillo Island, because everything that isn’t an armadillo, seems designed to please one, such as the dens and the beetles and the dewy, diggable earth.
The first time we met, you were downing cocktails and skimming cherry stones across the frothy Caribbean sea. “I’m Andrew from Watford,” you said, as you climbed the railings. I followed you because it was dark, no one was watching, and it felt like the sky was going to light up under your immortal feet. We never could agree who fell overboard first.
The armadillos were affectionate from the beginning and nuzzled us safely away from the tide. We acclimatised quickly, building shelters and beds and a makeshift rescue flare. We created basic medicines from plants. I spent a blissful three weeks learning to play the banjo you carved from a log.
It’s been hard at times, of course. I’ve missed butter and pyjamas. Every year, the approach of another winter makes you panic. And then there was last week, when I behaved so badly, you told me it was over, and that shuffling into the forest while you slept, to eat the last of the mangoes by myself, was unforgivable.
But here’s the thing. When you take exploratory trips to the other side of the island and you’re gone for hours, days sometimes, and then you come back and you’re not injured or lost or looking as though everything you once felt for me has gone, and you place a hot, sweet kiss on my forehead and tell me that you missed me, it’s like being caramelised.
So, what do you say, can we give it another shot?
George and Andrew felt the harness tighten and were lifted into the helicopter like marble statues that wept and bled and held all the secrets of the cosmos in their tiny, salty hands.
The title of this poem is a line from Freedom by Wham!
