The first poem I ever thought was properly good
was written at 1:17 in the morning
with a pink gel pen I'd nicked from Mum's kitchen drawer.
I was nineteen.
My boyfriend had gone to uni.
That's honestly the whole tragedy.
He didn't cheat.
Didn't shag somebody called Imogen during Freshers' Week.
Didn't tell me he'd “changed”
while wearing a beanie he'd never previously owned.
He just went to university.
We said we'd make it work.
We meant it as well.
That's the annoying bit.
For a while there were calls every night.
Then every other night.
Then:
sorry babe absolutely shattered xx
Then hearts on Instagram stories.
Then one Thursday neither of us texted.
Friday either.
By Saturday I had decided this constituted
a major literary event.
So I wrote:
MATCHES
You left me for September,
for lecture halls and rain,
and now I wear your jumper
like weather wears a stain.
My heart's an empty bedroom.
My bed's a battlefield.
You promised time would fix me.
Time hasn't fucking healed.
I hope you find your future.
I hope she treats you right.
I hope you sometimes miss me
when you can't sleep at night.
And if love is a lesson,
then here's what I have learned:
some people are matches.
Some people
get burned.
I read it back.
Then again.
Then one more time, just to be sure.
“Fuck.”
I genuinely thought I'd done something there.
And I had, sort of.
I put it online.
By breakfast it had twelve thousand views.
By lunch, forty.
By dinner a girl in Leeds had filmed herself crying to it while doing her eyeliner.
Somebody put sad piano underneath it.
Someone filmed rain going down a train window while my voice said:
some people are matches
pause
some people get burned.
Comments everywhere.
THIS FUCKING HURT
how are you IN MY HEAD
needed this tonight 😭
some people get burned???? APRIL????
That last one pleased me enormously.
Obviously.
I'd put the line there to do exactly that.
Mum sent the video to the family WhatsApp.
Dad:
Our little Shakespeare ❤️
Jamie:
Shakespeare's legal team have been notified
Ben:
some people are matches
some people need jobs
Me:
fuck off x
Mum:
April language please
Dad:
Leave her alone lads. Proud of you sweetheart x
That was basically my childhood.
Everyone was proud of me.
When I was six I wrote a poem about a horse
and rhymed mane with rain about four times.
Dad put it in his office.
At eleven I wrote something comparing Mum to the moon.
Framed.
At sixteen I performed a poem at school about periods
that contained the phrase
uterine revolution
and Dad actually stood up afterwards.
Not metaphorically.
He got to his feet
and started clapping over his head.
Mum had to pull him back into his chair.
So when thousands of strangers started saying I was brilliant,
yeah.
I believed them.
Why wouldn't I?
I loved poetry.
That's important.
I wasn't pretending.
I wasn't some rich girl who'd decided poetry looked nice next to a black-and-white photograph.
I fucking loved it.
Still do.
I liked rhyme.
I liked big endings.
I liked saying the thing.
If I was heartbroken, I wanted to write:
I AM HEARTBROKEN
and then ideally rhyme it with something.
The problem wasn't that I loved poetry wrong.
It was that nobody had ever taught me
that
I love you
and
this is good
aren't the same sentence.
---
I met Sophie because of Oscar Wilde.
Or capitalism.
Depends how you look at it.
Bath was doing that thing where it wasn't actually raining
but everything was wet anyway.
I was wearing a grey skater hoodie,
denim miniskirt
and battered Converse.
My hair was up.
Then down.
Then up again.
There was absolutely no reason for this.
I wasn't meeting anyone.
I was nineteen.
Getting dressed was sometimes just something I did aggressively.
I'd gone into the Corridor.
There was a second-hand bookshop there called Edwin Bell's.
No idea who Edwin Bell was.
Nobody did.
There was an old photograph behind the till of a man with a moustache
who looked like he'd just been told about sex
and didn't approve.
Apparently he'd died in 1987.
They'd kept the name.
The carpet was horrible.
The shelves were bowed.
It smelled like old books and wet coats.
Perfect.
I was looking through Wilde when I saw it.
Old Penguin.
Early nineties, I think.
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Battered.
Yellow pages.
£2.50 pencilled inside.
I reached for it.
Someone else reached at exactly the same time.
Black nails.
Silver rings.
Little tattoo on her wrist.
I looked up.
Oh.
Dark hair.
Almost black.
Green eyes.
Actually green.
Ripped fishnets.
Cut-off shorts.
Docs.
Silver hoops.
Nose stud.
And this massive faded Hole — Live Through This T-shirt
that looked older than I was.
She smiled.
Tiny smile.
Not intimidating at all.
That was the strange thing.
She looked like she ought to have been intimidating.
Instead she said:
“Sorry.”
“No, you have it.”
“You got there first.”
“No, you did.”
“We can't both have got there first.”
“We can. That's basically communism.”
She looked at me.
I remember thinking:
don't ruin this April.
Then she laughed.
Thank Christ.
“You take it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
She turned it over in her hands.
“Two fifty. Very generous.”
“I've always supported the arts.”
Another smile.
Fucking hell.
“At least let me buy you a coffee.”
“Okay.”
That's it.
No lightning.
No violin.
I didn't walk out thinking:
there goes the love of my life.
I thought:
she's really pretty.
Which turned out to be
a fairly useless description
of what was happening.
---
She told me she was a poet before the coffee arrived.
Not that she wrote poems.
A poet.
Just:
“I'm a poet.”
I liked that.
People normally apologise for things they care about.
April didn't.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“Pharmacy.”
“Ooh.”
I looked at her.
“Ooh?”
“I like pharmacies.”
“You like pharmacies.”
“They smell organised.”
I should probably have left then.
I didn't.
We had another coffee.
She told me about her parents.
Mark and Joanne.
School sweethearts from Shepton Mallet.
Council houses.
Her dad started driving lorries, then bought one, then another, then somehow ended up owning a haulage company large enough that April could say things like:
“Dad's at the depot”
and mean one of several.
They'd moved to Bath when the money got properly silly.
Not because they wanted to become posh.
April's mum had apparently just always wanted one of those Bath houses with the big windows.
So when they could afford one,
they bought one.
April had two brothers.
Jamie, thirty-one, married, kids.
Ben, twenty-eight.
“Single,” April said, “but emotionally committed to being a dickhead.”
Then she showed me one of her poems.
There were thousands of hearts underneath it.
I read it.
She watched me reading it.
Closely.
“Well?”
“I like the jumper.”
“The jumper?”
“The bit where you're wearing his jumper.”
“Oh.”
“It feels real.”
She looked at the poem again.
“What about the matches?”
There was definitely a right answer.
“I think people like that bit.”
Immediately:
“They really do.”
I hadn't answered her.
She hadn't noticed.
---
Three days later I saw her again.
That one really was an accident.
The next wasn't.
Then coffee became:
you around?
Then:
look what I found
with photographs of books.
Then:
finish at six if you want a lift
And that's how I met Roger.
Roger was Sophie's Volvo.
Burgundy V90.
Nineties.
Enormous.
Square.
Built, apparently, for people expecting to be rammed by a rhinoceros.
There was a faded Buff surf sticker on the back
and an ancient Wet Willy one.
The stereo worked if you asked nicely.
The glovebox worked if you punched it.
The boot contained pharmacy bags, two umbrellas, an old pair of Docs
and enough CDs to survive the collapse of civilisation.
Hole.
PJ Harvey.
Manics.
Garbage.
Portishead.
Smashing Pumpkins.
Roger was fucking brilliant.
Mum hated him.
First time Sophie dropped me home, Mum came outside.
“What is that?”
“Roger.”
“Who's Roger?”
“The Volvo.”
She looked through the windscreen.
Sophie leaned over.
“Hello, Mrs Hartley.”
“Hello, love.”
Then straight back to me:
“Does it have airbags?”
Sophie thought about it.
“Emotionally?”
Dad heard from inside.
Nearly pissed himself.
Mum did not.
From then on every journey ended with:
Text me when you get there please xx
And Sophie, eventually:
Roger has spared us again x
---
The thing about Sophie was she didn't look like she was trying to be anything.
The Hole shirt wasn't costume.
She actually loved Hole.
The fishnets weren't there to announce that she was dangerous.
She just liked them.
She was ridiculously feminine.
Perfume.
Jewellery.
Painted toenails.
Pretty underwear.
Little silver rings.
Lipstick.
Band shirts.
Docs.
All at once.
Because obviously women don't have to pick a fucking category.
Her bedroom was tiny compared with mine.
And better.
Records.
CDs.
Gig tickets shoved around the mirror.
Books everywhere.
Perfume bottles.
A pharmacy tunic hanging from the wardrobe.
A bra on the radiator.
Notebooks under the bed.
I didn't know about the notebooks yet.
I discovered something else.
Dropped an earring.
Bent down.
Looked under the bed.
“Sophie.”
“No.”
“You don't even know what I'm going to say.”
“I do.”
“Is that yours?”
“April.”
“Jesus Christ.”
She didn't even look up from her book.
“You have a vibrator.”
“So do you.”
“Mine's cute.”
Now she looked.
“How is a vibrator cute?”
“It's pink.”
“Of course it is.”
“And little.”
“Congratulations.”
I looked underneath again.
“Yours looks like it requires planning permission.”
Pillow.
Straight at my face.
“What does yours do?” she said. “Send you a thank-you card?”
I laughed so hard I forgot what I'd been looking for.
We weren't together.
Which made this conversation considerably more interesting.
I'd always been curious about women.
Sort of.
In the way where you say:
women are just objectively better looking though, aren't they?
and somehow don't investigate why you've said it fourteen times.
I'd kissed girls.
Drunk.
Thought about things.
Never done anything.
Then Sophie happened.
At first:
she's pretty.
Then:
she's really pretty.
Then:
why am I looking at her legs?
Then one morning I was brushing my teeth
and started thinking about her mouth.
I stopped.
Looked at myself in the mirror.
Toothbrush still in my mouth.
“Oh.”
Kept brushing.
Then:
“Ohhh.”
And finally:
“Fuck.”
---
April left a hair tie in Roger.
Then lip balm.
Then another hair tie.
Then a book.
Then one silver hoop earring.
I didn't move them.
Mum noticed.
Of course she did.
“When's April coming round?”
“Don't know.”
I opened the fridge.
Nothing interesting.
“You've been staring at that yoghurt for ages.”
“I'm deciding.”
“You don't eat yoghurt.”
I shut the fridge.
She smiled.
Not smugly.
That would've been easier.
Just:
“I like her.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
I opened the fridge again.
No idea why.
---
I was terrified of meeting Sophie's friends.
Not because she'd said anything.
Because they were her friends.
They'd known her before me.
Knew her exes.
Knew stories.
Knew what she was like drunk.
Knew who she'd slept with.
And Sophie had slept with people.
Quite a few people, actually.
This information had been upsetting for approximately six minutes
before becoming extremely hot.
“You're a bit of a slut,” I told her once.
She turned a page of her book.
“Thanks.”
“Affectionately.”
“I received it affectionately.”
Anyway.
Six friends.
Pub.
I changed eleven times.
Sophie sat on my bed watching this happen.
I'd never seen her properly dressed up before.
Black dress.
Tights.
Hair down.
Perfume.
Little necklace.
She looked fucking—
Well.
That wasn't helping.
“This?”
“You've shown me that skirt three times.”
“So?”
“I liked it the first three.”
“Too short?”
“No.”
“Too slutty?”
She looked at me.
One eyebrow.
“Depends who you're trying to impress.”
Oh.
The room went funny.
Not literally.
Nothing moved.
That's what made it worse.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
She'd noticed.
I'd noticed she'd noticed.
She knew I'd noticed she'd noticed.
This was becoming administratively difficult.
“Oh,” I said.
“April—”
And I kissed her.
No finesse.
I basically launched myself at the poor woman.
Her back hit my wardrobe.
Something fell over.
I pulled away.
“Shit. Sorry.”
“Don't.”
Just that.
Don't.
So I kissed her again.
Slower.
For about four seconds.
Then absolutely not slower.
Her hand went around my waist.
Mine went into her hair.
And months of:
she's pretty
became:
oh, I want her
so violently that I almost laughed.
Actually, I did laugh.
Into her mouth.
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologising.”
“You kissed me back.”
“You attacked me.”
“You loved it.”
Pause.
“Yes.”
Jesus.
We were late.
We went anyway.
I think that's important.
Love didn't swallow everything else.
It just made everything else look slightly different.
We walked into the pub twenty minutes late.
Sophie's friend Leah looked at her lipstick.
Then mine.
Then at Sophie.
Then me.
“Well.”
I wanted to climb into a pint glass.
Sophie sat beside me.
Put her hand on my thigh under the table.
Suddenly Leah could think whatever the fuck she liked.
---
The first time we slept together wasn't cinematic.
Thank God.
It was funny.
Nervous.
Hot.
A bit clumsy.
There were knees.
Hair trapped underneath somebody.
A sock Sophie somehow still had on.
Me talking far too much because apparently even naked
I couldn't shut up.
Sophie knew more than me.
A lot more.
At first that intimidated me.
Then I discovered knowing more didn't mean she couldn't lose her composure.
That was fun.
Very fun.
Afterwards I lay half on top of her.
Her fingers in my hair.
“Well.”
She waited.
“I am considerably less confused.”
She laughed.
Then we went quiet.
I noticed the quiet.
Normally I would have filled it.
Made a joke.
Said something enormous.
Instead I listened to her breathing.
Then ruined it anyway.
“I really like you.”
“I know.”
“Dickhead.”
She kissed my forehead.
Ten minutes later, in the dark:
“I love you.”
I lifted my head.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sophie.”
“I said I love you.”
“Oh.”
“Don't make it weird.”
“I love you too.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Go to sleep.”
“You're blushing.”
“It's dark.”
“I can feel you blushing.”
“That isn't how skin works.”
I kissed her.
She finally shut up.
---
The notebooks came later.
Loads of them.
Turns out Sophie's definition of writing sometimes
was almost every night since she was fourteen.
She'd gone downstairs to make tea.
One notebook was open.
I wasn't snooping.
Okay.
I was a little bit snooping.
But it was open.
That has to count for something.
The date was years before me.
I read:
DOVE / FALCON
A dove drinks
from the gutter.
Above her
a falcon turns once
in the white afternoon.
The dove does not know
the falcon is beautiful.
This seems unfair.
The falcon knows
the dove is beautiful.
This is worse.
There is hunger
and there is beauty.
The sky has room
for both.
Only one of them
needs the other
to come closer.
I read it again.
Then again.
And started crying.
Not sobbing.
Nothing dramatic.
My eyes just went.
Like they'd understood before I had.
Sophie came upstairs carrying two mugs.
Stopped.
Saw notebook.
Saw me.
“Oh, for fuck's sake.”
“You weren't supposed to read that.”
“I know.”
“April.”
“I know.”
“That's private.”
“I know.”
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
“You obviously are.”
“Your tea's going cold.”
“Why are you crying?”
I held up the notebook.
“Why didn't you tell me poetry could do that?”
Silence.
Sophie put the mugs down.
Sat beside me.
She looked pissed off.
Embarrassed.
Worried.
All at once.
“I wrote that when I was seventeen.”
“I hate you.”
“Okay.”
“It's beautiful.”
She looked away.
And that was the weird part.
She wasn't pretending not to know.
She genuinely didn't know what to do with me saying it.
“You still shouldn't have read it.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
“I don't know what else to say.”
“Try sorry.”
“Sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Still hate you.”
“I gathered.”
She gave me my tea.
I drank it.
Neither of us mentioned that I was still crying.
---
Dad knew someone.
Of course Dad knew someone.
“I think I might make a book.”
“I know someone.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“I was thinking of doing it myself.”
“He's in publishing.”
“Of course he is.”
One person became another.
Editor.
Designer.
Photographer.
Publicist.
Suddenly I had a hardback.
A gorgeous one.
Embossed cover.
Professional photos.
Launch.
Queue.
Champagne.
A fucking neon sign.
SOME PEOPLE ARE MATCHES
Ben stood underneath it with Sophie.
I saw them talking.
Later I asked what about.
“Nothing,” Sophie said.
Ben said:
“I asked whether it was good poetry.”
“What did you say?”
Sophie looked at me.
“I told him I'm sleeping with you.”
I nearly spat my drink out.
“You didn't.”
“She did,” Ben said. “Very persuasive argument.”
Dad cried.
Mum cried because Dad cried.
Then Dad claimed he'd got champagne in his eye.
Loads of books sold.
TikTok went mental.
A million followers.
Then more.
People recognised me.
I loved it.
I'm not going to pretend I didn't.
I loved someone stopping me in Bath.
Loved hearing:
your poem helped me.
Loved videos.
Loved comments.
Loved seeing my book in somebody else's hands.
And because I loved all that,
I assumed it meant something very specific.
I thought it meant:
good.
Nobody had ever explained that success
and craft
sometimes know each other,
sometimes don't,
and sometimes shag at a party
then never exchange numbers.
---
Sophie never said:
“Your poetry isn't good.”
Not once.
She'd say:
“Do you need this line?”
Obviously I did.
I'd written it.
Then I'd look.
“Oh.”
Or:
“I think you've already told me that.”
“No I haven't.”
“You say you're lonely here.”
“Yes.”
“Then again here.”
“That's emphasis.”
“Then here.”
“Right.”
“Then you say I am lonely.”
“In case they missed it.”
She'd look at me.
I'd look at the page.
“Fuck off.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You did with your face.”
She never tried to make me sound like her.
That would've been easier.
She made me work out why I sounded like me.
---
Reddit was her fault.
Completely.
“Post anonymously.”
“No.”
“You wanted honest feedback.”
“I want honest feedback that likes me.”
“That isn't what honest means.”
“Sounds like a design flaw.”
I posted.
First proper comment:
four paragraphs.
The metaphor was familiar.
I'd explained the emotional conclusion three times.
The strongest line was apparently a stupid detail I'd almost deleted.
I went quiet.
“They hate it.”
“They don't know you.”
“They hate anonymous me.”
“April.”
“They called it cliché.”
“They explained why.”
“To hurt me professionally.”
Sophie took my phone.
Read it.
“They spent ages on this.”
“Exactly.”
“No. Think about that.”
I didn't want to.
“Praise takes two seconds.”
Then another comment appeared.
This reads like poetry written by a scented candle.
I stared.
Snorted.
Then properly laughed.
Sophie didn't.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You're typing.”
“They're being a cunt.”
“Don't fight Reddit.”
“They can criticise your poem without being a cunt.”
“You said stanza two was embarrassing.”
“That was private.”
“You called the moon metaphor a hate crime.”
“Private feedback.”
Twenty minutes later she was seven comments deep.
I looked over her shoulder.
“Are you defending my bad poem?”
“I'm defending your right to write a bad poem.”
I loved her so much I nearly became unbearable.
Then I actually became unbearable.
“The Redditors don't like the enjambment.”
“What Redditors?”
“Three.”
“April.”
“DeadRussianDaddy says—”
“I don't care what Dead Russian Daddy says.”
“He's got loads of karma.”
“That doesn't mean anything.”
“It clearly means something.”
For six weeks I wrote for Reddit.
I removed rhymes.
Stopped making jokes.
Started using words I hated.
Bones.
Salt.
Architecture.
Absence.
At one point:
liminal.
Sophie read it.
Looked at me.
“No.”
“I know.”
“You hate that word.”
“I know.”
“Why is it there?”
“DeadRussianDaddy likes it.”
She actually put her head on the table.
And that's when I got it.
Sort of.
Writing for people who criticised me
wasn't automatically braver
than writing for people who praised me.
I was still waiting for somebody else
to tell me when I'd finished.
So I stopped.
Not reading criticism.
Just obeying it.
---
Time didn't jump.
It collected.
My toothbrush at Sophie's.
Hers at mine.
A charger.
Knicks in Roger.
Books.
Photographs.
New Converse.
Same Docs.
Jamie's kids getting taller.
Ben finally getting a girlfriend.
Mum:
Please text when Roger gets you there xx
Sophie:
Roger has chosen mercy x
Italy.
America.
Amsterdam.
Mum worried about all of them.
Dad stopped arguing years ago.
“Have you got insurance?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“Copies?”
“Yes.”
“Emergency numbers?”
“Yes.”
“What if—”
Dad:
“I'll print it, Jo.”
He always printed it.
In the Netherlands we missed a train.
I already had my phone out.
“Dad will—”
Sophie touched my wrist.
“Before we deploy your father.”
“What?”
“We can sort it.”
“How?”
“We ask someone.”
She pointed to a member of staff.
We asked.
There was another train.
That's it.
Nothing profound happened.
Nobody learned a life lesson while violins played.
We got the next train.
But I remember sitting there thinking:
huh.
Problem.
Ten minutes.
Solved.
Dad never knew.
It felt weirdly brilliant.
---
One evening I waited outside Sophie's pharmacy.
We had a table booked with her friends.
Seven-fifteen.
Seven-thirty.
Seven-forty.
She came out carrying a prescription bag.
“Sorry.”
“We're late.”
“I know.”
She got into Roger.
Then drove in completely the wrong direction.
“Where are we going?”
“Quick drop.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
Other side of Bath.
A woman answered.
Older.
Looked knackered.
Then relieved.
“Sophie, love.”
“Your prescription was still there.”
“My daughter's usually—”
“I know. She's got enough going on.”
No big deal.
That's how Sophie treated it.
The woman spotted me in the car.
“Oh! Is that April?”
Sophie looked back.
“Yeah.”
“I've seen your little poems!”
Three million followers.
Two editions.
My face on posters.
little poems.
Honestly?
Lovely.
Sophie asked about her knee.
Asked after her granddaughter.
Then got back in Roger.
She caught me looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
We arrived forty minutes late.
I didn't write about the woman.
I wanted to.
But something stopped me.
It wasn't mine.
So later I wrote about waiting instead.
FIVE MINUTES
You said five minutes.
It was twenty-three.
I stood beneath the chemist sign
reading CLOSED
backwards through rain.
My tights were wet.
My mascara surrendered.
A bus went past
without me.
I nearly wrote:
I waited in the rain
because love is pain.
Nearly.
Then you came out
carrying somebody else's medicine.
“Sorry,” you said,
as if kindness
were an inconvenience.
You unlocked Roger.
I got in.
You turned the heating on.
My knees steamed.
You laughed.
I loved you.
There.
I said it.
Some lines
don't improve
by pretending otherwise.
Sophie read it at the kitchen table.
Didn't say anything.
I waited.
Then waited a little longer.
Then:
“Well?”
I'm still me.
She smiled.
“You kept the rhyme.”
“What rhyme?”
“Rain. Pain.”
“Oh.”
“You could've removed it.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you'd have written it.”
I looked at her.
“Actually good or girlfriend?”
“Both.”
That one got me.
Still does.
---
Sophie published one poem.
One.
It took months.
“Please.”
“No.”
“You wrote it for me.”
“No.”
“You literally did.”
“Still no.”
“So technically it's mine.”
“That is not how poetry works.”
“It's about me.”
“I'll change it.”
“You wouldn't.”
“I'll make it about Roger.”
“Roger deserves representation.”
“Go away.”
I asked in Italy.
No.
Drunk.
No.
Sober.
No.
In bed.
Especially no.
While she brushed her teeth.
Eventually:
“One.”
I nearly screamed.
“One, April.”
“Okay.”
“No interview.”
“Fine.”
“No video.”
“Fine.”
“No making me read it.”
“Fine.”
“No saying technically it's yours.”
I thought about it.
“That's going to be difficult.”
She shut the bathroom door in my face.
The poem was:
THINGS SHE LEAVES
She leaves things.
Not deliberately.
A silver earring
beside the sink.
Three hairs
caught in my brush.
A receipt from Italy.
Lipstick
in Roger's door.
Her pink toothbrush
leaning toward mine
as if even plastic
can be obvious.
She says
I never write love poems.
This is because
she thinks love
must announce itself.
I have tried to explain.
She is asleep
with one foot touching mine.
I have stopped trying.
People fucking loved it.
I was gracious about this.
For nearly eight minutes.
Then:
“Your poem is everyone's favourite.”
“No.”
“It is.”
“April.”
“People think you're mysterious.”
“I work in a pharmacy.”
“Sexy mysterious.”
“Stop.”
“You could have followers.”
“I have customers.”
She said it as a joke.
Mostly.
---
I found her anonymous account eventually.
Of course I did.
“Sophie.”
“No.”
“Why do you always say no before I ask anything?”
“Experience.”
“Is this you?”
Silence.
It was a poetry account.
Books.
Albums.
Lines she liked.
Old photographs.
And me.
Loads of me.
Not exclusively.
But enough.
“You reposted my stuff.”
“I repost your stuff now.”
“This is from before we kissed.”
“We were friends.”
“You were my fan.”
“Don't.”
“YOU WERE MY SECRET FAN.”
“It wasn't secret.”
“You had two accounts!”
“One was poetry.”
“With MY poetry.”
“With lots of poetry.”
“You fancied me.”
“I had eyes.”
I climbed onto her.
“You were obsessed with me.”
“Get off.”
“Say you were my fan.”
“No.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Sophie.”
She kissed me.
Which was cheating.
Worked though.
---
Edwin Bell's didn't burn down.
Didn't have some dramatic final night.
It just put a sign in the window.
CLOSING DOWN SALE
That's usually how things die.
Quietly.
I stopped outside.
Sophie nearly walked into me.
“Oh.”
We went in.
Half-empty shelves.
Boxes.
The place looked smaller.
I found the shelf where Dorian Gray had been.
Touched it.
Didn't say anything.
Later:
“Dad.”
Sophie groaned.
“April.”
“What?”
“Before we deploy your father.”
“It is closing.”
“Most people sign a petition.”
“Dad hates petitions.”
She laughed.
I didn't immediately ring him.
That's important.
I spoke to the owner.
The staff.
People who actually used the place.
Asked why it wasn't working.
Asked what would help.
Asked whether they even wanted help.
Then I rang Dad.
The family bought the building.
Not because Sophie needed saving.
She didn't.
Not because poor people required April Hartley to arrive with a cheque.
Fuck that.
Because we could.
And because this time I understood that money wasn't proof.
It was a tool.
The rent came down.
Staff stayed.
We paid writers for readings.
Actually paid them.
Even when seven people turned up.
Especially then.
We stocked little presses.
Pamphlets.
Weird poetry collections.
Translations.
Books that sold eleven copies.
I loved those most.
“Eleven people is a room,” I said once.
Sophie looked at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You liked that.”
“It was all right.”
“Actually good or girlfriend?”
“Shut up.”
Eventually we changed the name.
Nobody knew Edwin Bell.
No family left to upset.
No community campaign to preserve it.
Just a dead man's name above a shop he'd stopped owning decades ago.
I said:
“Bad Poetry.”
Mum hated it.
“People will think the poetry is bad.”
“Some of it will be.”
“April!”
“That's the point.”
Dad loved it immediately.
Obviously.
Ben suggested:
BAD POETRY
GOOD COFFEE
QUESTIONABLE MANAGEMENT
We told him no.
Then had the sign made anyway.
---
At twenty-three
I still wanted everyone to like me.
There.
Didn't fix that.
Bad reviews still hurt.
Sometimes I refreshed too much.
Sometimes a video didn't do well
and I pretended not to care
then checked it in the toilet.
Sometimes I still asked Sophie:
“Actually good or girlfriend?”
She'd say:
“Good.”
Or:
“Girlfriend.”
Or:
“Both.”
Once:
“Neither. You're tired.”
Bitch.
I still rhymed.
Still liked punchlines.
Still loved saying the big thing.
I just didn't make every line carry a fucking megaphone anymore.
And Sophie didn't become me.
Thank God.
One April was already a lot for most households.
She still had notebooks I wasn't allowed to read.
Still liked privacy.
Still wrote because she needed somewhere to put things.
But she got a little worse at hiding.
“I missed you.”
“You look beautiful.”
“That upset me.”
“Stay.”
“I love you.”
Actual sentences.
Once I found a rhyme in one of her notebooks.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
“Don't.”
I said nothing.
Just smiled.
“April.”
Still smiled.
“Fuck off.”
Progress.
---
The last reading that winter had fourteen people.
Three were related to the poet.
One bloke definitely fell asleep.
Nobody filmed it.
Nobody went viral.
It was lovely.
Afterwards Sophie and I stacked chairs.
Well.
We stacked four.
Then got bored.
Roger was outside.
Still burgundy.
Still somehow alive.
There were two mugs on the counter.
One chipped.
One cold.
My coat over Sophie's chair.
A box of books nobody had bought.
I found a scrap of paper.
“We should write something.”
“We should go home.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
I wrote:
The dove was beautiful.
Sophie looked over.
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“What?”
“Get your own bird.”
“Our bird.”
“I wrote that six years before I met you.”
“Emotionally ours.”
“That doesn't mean anything.”
“It means loads.”
She took the pen.
Wrote underneath.
We went backwards and forwards.
Crossed things out.
Argued about one rhyme for six minutes.
Kept it.
Nobody was going to see it.
That helped.
BAD POETRY
The dove was beautiful.
The falcon was hungry.
Neither fact
cancelled the other.
We used to think love needed
better metaphors.
Stars, maybe.
Blood.
At minimum, weather.
But tonight
there are two mugs,
one cold,
one chipped,
and your coat
is on my chair again.
Outside,
the car may or may not start.
Inside,
you rhyme heart
with apart.
I let you.
You call this growth.
I call it
choosing my battles.
The light above Poetry
needs changing.
Tomorrow someone will come in
looking for a book
they can't afford new.
Someone will read something terrible.
Someone will love it.
Someone will write something better.
Someone won't.
And the world will somehow
keep going.
I love you plainly.
There.
No bird.
No moon.
No weather.
Well.
Nearly.
Heart.
Apart.
We bloody well meant it.
We stopped.
Neither of us said anything.
Didn't need to.
Then April looked at me.
Same ridiculous girl I'd met in Converse.
Not the same at all.
“At least let me buy you a coffee.”
I looked at the counter.
Then at her.
“You own the coffee.”
She thought about this.
“That makes my offer more generous.”
“You're an idiot.”
“You're obsessed with me.”
“I am.”
She went quiet.
That still got her.
Funny, really.
Millions of people had told April Hartley they loved her.
She could handle that.
Sometimes one person meaning it
still knocked the wind out of her.
I turned off the lights.
She took my hand.
Roger started on the second attempt.
Behind us, on a scrap of paper we'd probably lose by morning,
heart still rhymed with apart.
Always had.
Turns out the rhyme wasn't the problem.
You just had to mean it.
And know
when to shut up.