Listen, Big Shot, when you gave the order to leave and cast me out, I turned the corner.

Boy, just picture this; back in my parents' house, tail between my legs, licking my wounds and sleeping in a room that doesn't fit me. But I can remember the days when a smile, a wink of the eye or an arch of the eyebrow set off the whole shooting match and a light fire would run beneath my skin. I was homeless when I met you but now I have a roof over my head, food in my stomach and money in the bank. My new security cloaks me when I lie in bed on an airless Saturday, unable to uncurl myself from my foetal position.

Boy, you should see me now; new coat, new shoes, new bag. No more tatty trouser hems dragging through mud and sucking up puddle water like blotting paper. I slept on other people's floors for weeks until that night I had nowhere else to go, had exhausted all the favours I could ask and drained to the dregs the kindness of friends. I crept underneath a huge oil cylinder to sleep. Boy, you might think it would have kept me warm but nothing stops the concrete coldness that creeps into your marrow when you sleep outside. You would never have guessed where I had lain down the night before when you saw me the next day.

You called me kid, that was my name. Questions, coaxings, endearments all began or ended with "kid".

"Alright, kid?"

"Hey kid!"

"I dunno kid, maybe you should've…"

Should've told you to shove it, leave it out, quit it. Should've gotten out the first time I thought of you softly and smiled to myself as I travelled on a crowded bus. Always kid, even though I was older and had dark circles under my eyes and the beginning of a wrinkle just above my nose from frowning. Your skin was always free from shadows. My body felt like it was crumbling. It was becoming creaky and my skin was grey. My shoulders stooped as if under a great weight and if I kept very quiet I could hear my bones clacking against each other. Working the tip of my tongue between my teeth, I swear I could feel them waggling in their roots. In my dreams they fell out by the row, decayed and hollow. But you Boy, were smooth, unmarked, unfingered by time. Why did dirt and dust never cling to you? Why were your fingernails never dirty?

But I should have known. A package of letters and photographs, nearly two years old, neatly stored away. An old girlfriend, the significant ex. Unlucky charms, perhaps. I wished I had never found them, but occasionally I enjoyed the acute and exquisite pain of remembering the happy smiles that the camera lens lingered on, not meant for inquisitive and envious eyes. It did not matter if the rest of the affair was soaked in misery and pain; it was enough that you were happy for the microsecond it took for the camera shutter to open and let the light flood in. Enough to give me a sharp pain in my stomach near where a new beating life lay furled beneath my ribs.

That's all over with now. I haven't cried for months, my airwaves are no longer full of the sound of weeping. And listen to this, Boy: the only time I came within a whisker of missing you was one day by the sea, my fingers numbed by icy, salty air. Applying them to my shoelaces they would not work, would not go through the memorised motions of loops and knots they had been carrying out for years. Then it came back to me. Another frozen day, you crouching at my feet, taking my laces in hand and doubleknotting them for security. But now loose shoelaces flapped back and forth, whipping up sand and reminding me that I am lonely and I suffer.

^