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The disgust eats me up, forbidding the guilt to ever cross my eyes The sea gust hears me out, as if I have something as pure to say I write this with out knowing why or when I write this with out knowing for who or then the mind fights the icks of unknown mends as the time bends my sight lands on something out of these lands but may i state my purpose of these writings they shatter the ideology of who I once wanted to be to shine so brightly of who people can talk about so delight-ly but I've taken the life to lightly I must show a different form of life's desire rings that we collect from other bright leaves but forget them when the sun, the might leaves don't think of it as playbook ever so slightly

Saturday, 7th June 1947 — Soho, London.

Bramwell: Ah... I hadn't noticed the time.

The day had arrived slowly, like a grey hand pressing against the window.

Bramwell sat before his unfinished novel, though calling it a novel felt generous. It was more a stack of pages, crossed-out sentences, and thoughts he had already written a hundred different ways. Some mornings, he believed he was close to saying something true. Other mornings, like this one, the words seemed to know him too well and refused to come out.

He rose from the desk and made the only thing that carried him through the morning: black coffee, no sugar. Not because it was romantic, but because sugar was rationed, and because the bitterness suited the hour.

The curtains stirred slightly as he passed them, revealing a sky low and swollen with rain. It was the kind of sky that made no promises. The rooftops of Soho sat beneath it, dark and damp, their chimneys breathing into the morning like tired men.

Bramwell reached for the door handle, then stopped halfway.

He glanced back at the desk.

There, beside the unfinished pages, lay his Conway Stewart fountain pen. Its black body caught what little light entered the room.

It was not the sort of thing Bramwell would have bought for himself. He had always found such possessions too fine for his hands, as though they belonged to men who knew what they were doing. But it had been a gift, and that made it worse somehow.

For a moment, he looked at it and felt the old unease return.

Then he smiled faintly and stepped onto the balcony.

A cigarette rested behind his ear. His lighter sat in his fob pocket. He took the cigarette and lighter out without thinking much of it. His hands knew the habit better than he did. The lighter sparked once, then again, and so did the cigarette. It was a kind of burning sensation that made everything go silent just long enough for the paper to become the only sound.

He inhaled.

For a second, everything seemed to narrow: the wet stone beneath his feet, the coffee cooling inside, the cigarette between his fingers, and the quiet ache of another sleepless morning.

Bramwell: Far from any man's reach are the clouds, yet I can't seem to give up on trying to touch them.

He had been awake since three in the morning, trying to write something that might comfort him. But he had written nothing he had not already thought of a million times before.

Night was captivating that way. It made every feeling appear profound, then left it embarrassed by morning.

Bramwell was tall and thin, with short black hair combed neatly into place. His eyes were so dark they seemed to hold attention without asking for it. Beneath them sat shadows that looked less like lack of sleep and more like lack of life.

He appeared, by most accounts, to be an ordinary man. But there was something in him that never quite settled. A quiet heaviness behind the eyes, a hesitation before certain words, the sense that he was always standing between what he meant to say and what he had sworn never to reveal.

His days, if watched from a distance, could be explained in three steps: he woke to write, went to work, and returned home. Sometimes, only sometimes, he went out.

But distance is a generous thing. It makes mountains appear smaller than they are.

Those who passed him in the street might have called his life sufficient. Quiet, respectable, even peaceful. They would not have noticed how carefully he avoided certain roads, or how his hand sometimes paused before opening a letter, or how his eyes changed when a name was almost spoken.

Perhaps I had once called it sufficient too.

Or perhaps I had only wanted to.

A voice broke the crowded mind.

Edith: Good morning, Bramwell.

He turned his head.

Edith had just stepped onto the terrace next door, half-hidden among the flowers she tended with more patience than the weather deserved. The rain had left beads of water along the leaves and petals, and she moved carefully between them, gloved hands brushing the stems as though greeting them one by one.

She was smiling at him with that familiar brightness of hers, the sort she offered the world before deciding whether the world deserved anything more.

Bramwell: Good morning, Edith.

Edith: You look as though the morning has been unkind to you.

Bramwell lowered the cigarette from his lips.

Bramwell: Then I shall have to forgive it before noon.

She smiled a little more, as though he had said something extraordinary.

Edith: Very noble of you.

Bramwell: I try to be noble before the coffee cools. It saves trouble later.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

The rain had stopped, though the world had not yet recovered from it. The terrace stones still shone darkly beneath their feet, and the iron railings held small drops of water like glass along their edges. Above them, the clouds remained swollen and low, as though holding back the rain out of some strange courtesy, unwilling to break the moment too soon.

With anyone else, Edith might have filled the silence with something cheerful and harmless. With Bramwell, she seemed content to let it remain.

Then Edith glanced past him, toward the open terrace door, toward the desk inside, toward the pages he had not managed to finish.

Edith: Did it keep you up again?

Bramwell stared at the end of his cigarette. The ash twitched, but did not drop.

Bramwell: I stayed up myself. The writing was merely... there.

Edith: That sounds like something you say when you do not want to admit the obvious.

Bramwell: And what would be the obvious?

Edith put down the small gardening scissors she was holding and flicked a bit of damp earth from her glove.

Edith: That you never sleep when you should.

He met her eyes.

There was no accusation in her tone. No careful study of his motives. Only the quiet of someone who knew him well enough not to question his habits anymore.

Bramwell: That is a dangerous thing to say before a man has finished his cigarette.

Edith: Then finish it.

Bramwell: Would you really have me smoke amongst your flowers?

Edith: I would have you stop treating them as if they care.

She said it without expecting much of a reaction. Simple words. Careless, even.

Bramwell exhaled quietly through his nose.

Bramwell: You'll damage them with that sort of talk.

Edith: They've dealt with far worse than you.

He looked down at the terrace stones, still dark from the rain.

Bramwell: You'll catch cold out here.

Edith: I've only just stepped outside.

Bramwell: Then go back inside. It is not too late to be sensible.

She looked down at the flowers at her feet, stayed with them for a moment, then looked back up at him.

Edith: People who mind about such things are no fun to be around.

Bramwell took another slow drag from his cigarette.

Bramwell: Then that is the nicest thing you have said to me all morning.

Edith: Oh, don't be silly. It is not even morning yet.

He almost smiled.

Almost.