Moderate this: Track 19

Though it’s many years since I saw you, I still carry the photograph you gave me. It’s of you when you were a teenager - lithe and warm with skin thin stockings, your eyes, the colour of wet coffee. I loved your ears, the way they curved through your hair and your sharp chin; it gave your face a severe look, as though it had been carved from the same stone they used to build the pyramids. The last time I heard from you, you were still in your room on the edge of time. Your fingers, still holding that pipe to your lips, the mauve smoke sliding out from the corners of your mouth. You said you’d just made the dish we used to eat together: jasmine rice with lime leaves, garlic prawns - their curved bodies flecked with chilli. You’d place lemon water in saucers for our hands, and we’d sit by the fire, eating them. I watched your fingers - how they moved over the prawn’s body, teasing the shell away from the flesh. After, you said: ‘Go now. Leave me. Don’t come back.’ You were having what you’d call, a ‘heavy moment’ often brought on a Friday night when the moon was low, or cracked. I’d say: ‘Don’t say that. You don’t know what you’re saying,’ and you’d say: ‘Oh yes, I do.’ I’d look at you again, leaning towards the fire in the grate, your pale hair smudged with soot, ‘But I’m alone,’ I said. You’d stand up, take the raven-feather mask from its nail and walk away.