Swirling heart line design

The night ferry was late again, so I sat on the bench outside the Cannon Street lamp and watched the rain write loops across the puddles. You would have laughed at me. I had your letter folded in my coat and kept touching it the way a man touches a pocket watch he has stopped trusting. Every swirl in your handwriting still curls like a fern that has been waiting all winter to unroll.

I tried to draw you a heart on the back of the ticket stub, the way you taught me, with the tail looping off the top and the little scrolls spilling down. It came out lopsided, all scrolls and no bottom, and I left the three dots where my pencil had paused, because I could not decide whether they were stars or spilled ink. A woman at the kiosk asked if I was all right. I said I was waiting for the late boat and she said, very kindly, that nobody waits for the late boat on purpose.

The ferry came in at a quarter past two with its lights smeared yellow. I did not get on. I walked back up the hill past the shuttered bakery, past the church with the cracked clock, and I wrote this at the kitchen table with the radiator ticking. Come on the morning train. Bring the ink that smells of oranges. I will be the one with the pencil heart in his pocket, still missing its last curl.

Yours, with all the flourishes I can manage, Theo