Separation by Sophie Bird

Separation Creative Nonfiction As luck, fate, or excellent timing would have it, we were born mere miles and four hours apart—split, like Plato’s twins.

April, the month of our births, was meant to be a four-week celebration of tremendous joy and depravity. We were going to drink champagne—that we couldn’t afford—on Hampstead Heath, climb trees, go skinny dipping. We were going to stay out under the stars and watch the yellow-blue sunrise. We were going to go to work at two AM and watch Monsters Inc on the big screen. We were going to pull a sickie and play tube roulette and spend the day wherever we ended up. We’d played with the idea of Vegas but decided an Air BnB in Cornwall would suffice. We were going to have a games-night-marathon with our friends. We agreed to plan a surprise... I’d bought body paint, a tarpaulin, and enormous sheets of paper.

Instead, we’re a two-hour drive from each other, resorting to online card games and playing Match 4 over Zoom. Wishing each other happy birthday over Face Time. We’ve started kissing the camera goodbye to feel closer, and I sleep with his shirt on to make up for warmth cooled in the distance. Everything’s fine until everything’s worse when you reach the day’s when you had planned to be lying on a beach covered in sand and sun cream, but find yourself sitting in yesterday’s pants pretending that you really want porridge for the thirteenth day in a row.

We were going to make a three-tier lemon cake, with thick vanilla buttercream, and eat it with tiny forks. We’d planned to make it together. But instead, we ordered vegan donuts for each other. We ate them on a video call, sticky fingers holding glasses of whiskey on ice that we froze in old Tupperware boxes.

The friends we would have celebrated with made us a music video of them playing guitars and pianos and singing “Make You Feel My Love” by Adele. We sat in our respective beds and cried and tried to explain how happy we were. How lucky we are.

And the days I remember we decided to be separate make me hate him. But missing him reminds me that this isn’t the case, even under the lonely, hateful blanket of isolation. Conversations are finding new ground, letting each other in on otherwise solo activities. We’re putting roots down in new interests and filling the gaps in our memories where our bodies would be so that when we look back on this time, we will forget we were apart.

The distance which carries our words like a string between two tin cans will fade amongst the volume of our love and in the reliable surety of that first, familiar hug. I write in May, dreaming of June, July, August, him…

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The Author

Sophie Bird acts, writes, loves and is outspoken against acts of inequality and injustice.

Sophie Bird, Woodford Halse, UK