-Did you get up to anything on your day off?

My boss asks, eyebrows slightly raised eyes slightly glazed, not interested in an answer or the question or the day, and I look off outwards to the restaurant trying to maintain a good posture and remember yesterday, yesterday sitting in my kitchen with a bottle of bourbon, a banana and buttered bread sitting there and wishing there was a sparrow or something alive I could stare at to see how they did it but there was only the same garden fence and plastic greenhouse with nothing in it and a vegetable patch sprouting beer cans.

I woke up outside an hour later and the cold was shuddering through my bones and my calves tight and sinewy, cramped-

-I couldn’t wake you, I was a bit worried

I put my head on her shoulder, she placed a chocolate bar in my shirt pocket

-Look at you you’re freezing

Her arms remained by her sides, I stared at the dim light of the oven trying to cut through the grease on the glass and remembered I didn’t look in the mirror all of yesterday and I hadn’t changed my bed clothes since I bought them five months ago and I had soiled them drunk urinating (though in my defence that was a sort of running joke now “Luke, how are them pissy sheets? Haha” It was only a little leak for god sake) I had a keen sense of detriment and a keen sense of loss, and yes I did cry that night the first time in a long time maybe six years, the sprung tears squeezing free very hesitantly, like the fluid out of low quality sausages, but that was for a completely different reason and a completely different story.

-Luke?

Ah, yes boss.

-Not much

I say, rubbing listlessly at the biro on my shirt

-Not much at all