Nau mai Kindlingers to this issue of The Kindling. If you’re new here, welcome. I hope you like it – we’re all very nice.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks as I continue to write my novel and struggle to write anything else. I’ve had two lovely rejections and am still waiting to hear back on other things I’ve submitted. I guess we can call this business as usual!

At the time of writing I’m going to the Frankenstein play at ASB Waterfront Theatre tonight – looking forward to it. The Romeo & Juliet play they put on recently was INCREDIBLE.

This poem is my first attempt at two things: seeing if clouds could be the centre of a collection (I love them), and doing some HTML coding so that my poem is actually formatted correctly.

The story came from snippets of various conversations I’ve had recently and sorted itself nicely onto the page on Monday morning.

Enjoy!

It was strange to feel the same despite all the time that’s passed since she’d seen him. He sat the same, leaning to one side, one leg crossed over the other. His hair was recently cut though, she couldn’t remember how he used to wear it, she guessed it was longer than before. His clothes seemed nicer, though his style hadn’t changed. Perhaps he’d paid more for these items than the ones he’d worn ten years ago. She hoped, at least, that he was being paid more than he was ten years ago.

He looked at her just the same. Poked fun at her idiosyncrasies with the same comedic timing, the same care to jest without making her feel self-conscious. Around him, she’d always felt considered. Like the way a crowd considers a talented musician – with a mix of awe and curiosity.

She’d made sure to message him last. After the family barbecues and the girls’ weekend away. If she was honest with herself, of everyone she’d wanted to see, she’d wanted to see him the most.

When she went to message him a week ago, she saw that she hadn’t replied to his last message. Every year or so he sent her a message with a photo of somewhere they’d been together or something he knew she’d appreciate. He’d sent the last message a year and a half ago. It was the month she’d moved to Sydney and had opened every message she received without reading it so she wouldn’t have notifications shouting at her every time she opened her phone. If she hadn’t been back in Auckland wanting to see him, she had no idea when she would’ve seen his message. He might’ve sent another photo and she’d be none the wiser.

It was a photo of a Briscoes sale poster hanging in front of a shelf of sheets. The message underneath read, ‘You were right, they do discount everything eventually.’ She’d caught herself rolling her eyes. To say they’d broken up over sheets would be an overstatement, but those sheets had been the crack that became a gaping chasm in their relationship.

***

Walking through the mega centre, they held hands and went over their to-do list.

‘Wooden chopping board, lightbulbs, birthday card for Mum… anything else?’

‘Ah, yeah. I want to look at sheets.’

‘Sheets?’

‘Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video the other day about why hotels buy sheets with a really high thread count and I thought, why don’t we get some hotel-level-nice sheets?’

‘Our sheets are fine. They’re nice ones from Adairs. Mum got them for me when I got my first job.’

‘Oh, your five-year-old sheets with that stain that we can’t get out? Those nice sheets?’

She hit him with mock offence. ‘The stain from when you itched a mosquito bite so hard it bled in your sleep, yes.’

‘I just want to look. There might even be a deal.’

By the time they made it to the sheets section, their basket was full of other things that weren’t on their shopping list. She did some quick calculations and reasoned that some nicer sheets wouldn’t hurt. Any under a hundred dollars with his ideal thread count would be okay.

‘This is them.’ He pulled a set off the shelf.

‘Oh, perfect.’ They pulled on the snap fasteners and shoved their hands inside. ‘These feel so good.’

He nodded and pretended to fall asleep just from touching such luxury.

‘Okay, how much are they? Did you get the right size?’

‘Yeah, king. They’re… oh, they’re over four hundred dollars.’

Her eyes widened. ‘We’re not buying sheets for four hundred dollars. Put them back.’

‘How much do we have in the bank? Surely we can treat ourselves with some sheets?’

‘We can spend a hundred max.’

His eyes widened then. ‘A hundred max.?’

She nodded.

‘The cheapest set is two hundred.’

‘Let’s come back when they’re on sale, then.’

‘These are too nice they never put these on sale.’

‘They will eventually. They always do.’

‘No, not high-thread-count sheets.’

‘Yes, even high-thread-count sheets.’ They looked at each other positioning their arguments and trying to predict what the other would counter with. Trying to read each other’s minds.

‘How long until you think they’d put them on sale, then?’

‘I don’t know. Depends how new the product is, how well it sells. By the time they go on sale we might not even be together anymore, who knows what the world will look like then.’

He recoiled. ‘What?’ The hurt in his eyes was immediate.

‘I just mean we can’t predict the future, but we can keep an eye on sheet prices in the meantime.’

He put the set of sheets on a random shelf and pulled his lips into a half-hearted smile as he gestured to the checkout. She took two of the items that hadn’t been on their shopping list out of the basket on their way over, he didn’t argue.

The car ride home was quiet; they kept the radio on the lowest volume because they couldn’t turn it off without losing the tuning.

They broke up a few days later. He believed that she saw their relationship as temporary, she believed that he saw her as an obstacle to experiencing joy.

They couldn’t see eye to eye, so she left, taking her stained sheets with her. For a long time she wondered if he had gone back and bought the four-hundred-dollar sheets. She’d moved over the ditch the year after. Her new bed was a queen. Shopping for sheets was triggering, and she bought the first set she saw on discount.

When she’d messaged him to catch up, she’d hoped he would be away or already have plans, but he didn’t. He replied by sending her the name of a café followed by a question mark.

It wasn’t until she parked across the road that she realised that the café had changed but was the same place they’d used to go to when they’d been dating. She got the same feeling when she saw him – the same person but inexplicably different.

When their coffees arrived, he told her she was right about another thing, too.

‘What’s that?’ She tried not to sound like she was flirting. Even after ten years he was so familiar.

‘That we wouldn’t be together when the sheets finally went on sale.’

‘Did you end up buying them after we broke up?’ She posed the question as if it had just occurred to her, not like it had plagued her mind for years.

He smiled like he’d been waiting for her to ask. ‘I thought about buying them,’ he admitted. ‘Sometimes I would go into Briscoes just to look at them, to feel them,’ he rubbed his fingers together and gave a small laugh. ‘I never bought them! I think it would’ve been even worse crying in nice sheets. Like I’d picked them over you.’

She looked to her right, over the road to the ocean beyond. Was quiet for a moment. ‘You didn’t buy them.’ She turned back.

He considered her, shook his head. ‘I didn’t.’

‘I wish you had.’ Why was she tearing up?

‘And live with that on my conscience?’ He leaned forward on their small table. ‘I’d have just as soon flown to Australia and asked you to marry me.’

She felt the tears tip over and brush her cheeks, ‘I wish you had.’