The Death of the Poet by N Quentin Woolf

Author:N Quentin Woolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile

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In 2003 you came back for Christmas. I’d been sitting in the dark, and then the room seemed to swing in the headlights of a car turning on the drive, and someone was dropped off. I didn’t get to my feet until I heard your key in the lock.

You were standing in the vestibule without any suitcases, and your hair was all shaved off. Your face seemed sharper. It took me a moment to realise it was you. You looked around the place like a tomb raider breaking into a pyramid – I half expected you to turn on a flashlight. You put on the main light and stood under it, looking at me.

‘Welcome home,’ I said.

You smiled a tight smile.

I said, ‘I like what you’ve done with your hair,’ but that seemed to have been the wrong thing to say. ‘I missed you,’ I said.

You came over and pecked a kiss on my good side. Then Josh came downstairs and you lavished affection on him.

Later, you skipped dinner, and went instead to the room that had once been my father’s study but was now yours, and you wrote letters longhand on special writing paper, your bald head bent close over, putting down words at a furious pace, like your life depended on it.

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