The Contingency Plan

It’s almost cruel to find this machine after a two year absence. To discover old pictures, letters, wedding plans, invitation lists, written routines of a baby, and proof of life together – remnants of myself I’d banished to deeper spaces.

I’m still in shock at how fat I was. I mentioned my 25kg weight loss to someone yesterday and the figure seemed exaggerated. I can see now that it was not.

My son is so tall now. Half my height. And speaks to me like a little man. His expressions are raw and unaffected by his surroundings. We’ve been watching movies of him as a babe. The images reinforce a version of him that has morphed into his present form, which seems so sophisticated now.

I crave more children. I sense them in my cells but as I write here in my house, alone, a cigarette in my mouth as I type, I don’t know when or whether they will come, and for this reason I’m glad that I already have one. I still smoke in halves.

It’s cold outside. I search for a song that can eloquently express my insides yet everything seems too familiar and I’m infatuated by letters from a new man. Funny letters featuring obscure lists, favourite words and new discoveries. We met last week to share gin and a six hour conversation but he’s since disappeared into the stress of a phD and I don’t know whether he will return. He’s online now and I sit, wondering whether I still capture any of his thoughts. And whether we’ll ever kiss.

I check my gmail, hotmail, yahoo, work mail, facebook, myspace and that dating website and nothing has changed.

And it’s time to give him a bath, to read him five stories before bed and to then return here, to work and prepare for a new week.