Unpause

Wesley enjoys classic orange soda, sleeping on the job and anything that could reasonably be termed artisan art. 

He has a nine to five job but has done the maths and knows he typically works for 327 minutes each day.

Wesley is rarely sad and attributes this to knowing exactly who he is and what it is that matters.

He eats rough puff pastry slowly so he can savour each and every layer. He never skimps on the price as nothing is worse than poor-quality butter. 

“Is it just yourself, no other family?”

He is proud that he stopped the oncologist whose cheeks washed to pink from discussing the gory details of his mother’s imminent prognosis as she lay dying between them. He categorically refused to have the ‘chat’ on a corridor that stank of disinfectant and despair. Life could be a cruel and capricious tyrant but he felt it deserved so much more grace. Instead, he had the conversation in a cramped supply cupboard because the family liaison room was filled by another family grappling with tragedy. It was a necessary dialogue but it still felt messy and awkward like a crash landing in a junkyard. 

“Is there anyone you would like us to contact because this is not something you should go through alone?”

The nurse from the hospice team had a stern tone that day as if everything she had previously said should by then have reached eye level. 

Wesley hated all the questions that surrounded death especially considering death itself didn’t like to be questioned. He often thinks how harmful we are and yet how weak as short-lived pollinators of this earth.

He is superstitious and curtsies to magpies as he passes. Over the years his taproots have spun and spiralled endlessly searching for soil that ultimately just wasn’t there. 

Wesley plans meticulously so that it appears a natural consequence that Christine is the third person to be invited. She must never know that he holds her in the sunlight, that she is a light-embroidered echo of living wings that sprints across his open journal each night.

He has never indulged in the tasty convenience that is a canapé and he does not heed the adage that objects may be closer than they appear in his side mirrors.

Wesley allowed his heart to love once before. He remembers the blotchy feeling of exposure that looked like a cross-section of a sliced pomegranate all pimply and unattractive. 

He would go back to 1997 if he could choose. His father had taken him to a Lego convention and his Pop Pop’s smile had been so botanical and proud that Wesley had almost forgotten to walk the stage and take his stupid trophy. 

Wesley knows that falling doesn’t just happen, there is order in the delicacy of time. He also knows that falling would probably be more pleasurable if one could experience it in reverse. 

Wesley doodled prolifically as a child. His hand brushed in broad yet perfect concentric circles that orbited a lone planet. His parents didn’t perceive the blooms of algae, the salinity that had shifted and pinned his drawings to the fridge above the water dispenser with apparent glee. 

He learned in science class that the ebb and flow of crashing waves create V-shaped patterns called rhomboid ripple marks. If a lapping wave encounters a pebble or other object, it scours the sand around it, forming more distinct crescents. 

Wesley never valued himself and things worsened as a teen when stubborn acne corrugated his neck and face. 

He wrote Christine’s invitation in a secret language to nurture conjuration. He’d been particularly pleased when she solved the runic magic of his inscription. He feels the stir in him, the departure from the immovability of stone. 

Wesley does not underestimate her importance. She is not one of the many that repeat themselves in fractal patterns against the sky. She is of the few, of the few that matter. 

He is mesmerised by her ensorcelling beauty. Her greatness protrudes just enough to point, she exemplifies unironically the convergence of chance. 

Wesley is her extremely efficient way to fill a space. She flows to him because tears for another man ineffectually braided a river.

He is unaware that he is just a distracting ribbon of colour void of its intrinsic poetry. 

Wesley is entirely earnest when he states “this meal is my visual poem just for you”. 

Wesley pauses at the top of the stairs on the night of his soireé so that the assembled guests can slurp his splendour.

He is too self-absorbed to notice that Christine is waltzing with Tony who is looking particularly debonair. 

Wesley’s knife has just slipped under the greyish rind of a soft brie when he sees Christine’s lips peck Tony’s but Tony isn’t about to settle for anything other than a full smack.

He rips the knife from its gooey enclave and watches as captive as the rest of his party as it traverses the room and splices the pretentious wallpaper inches from Tony’s stubbly chin hair. 

Wesley hears himself issue a heartfelt and sincere apology but no one else does and so panic consumes the caramel-scented room. 

He knows that Christine doesn’t cry but she does unleash an uncomfortably shrill encyclopedia of sound. 

Wesley will testify that he didn’t think because he didn’t before throwing the gobstopper and hitting Tony in the umbilicus.

Tony doesn’t cry. His face is still laminated with joy. Tony doesn’t think. He chews and chews the sweet candy as one or two people gently gossip and replenish their glasses. Tony then blows a bubble that makes a pop so loud the bemused crowd has no choice but to return the naughtiness of his wink. Wesley will take a month, maybe two to process what has happened, but he will conclude that although there may be notable exceptions that do not immediately spring to mind, he seems better suited to dining alone.