Faith was a beautiful girl, 20, like some kind of waif,
as if one of the greats had sculpted her out of alabastar.
I was playing a 12 string in the dingy cigarette tainted basement

of a backpackers in Bath. It was a strange place, run by Australians.
A guy going by the name of Shaggy sat next to me with his didgeridoo. He was a South African traveller, I had jammed with him before.
We really got it going, some kind of Celtic Aboriginal fusion. It had been empty before but people had come down, with beers, and pot, and girlfriends.

That's when it happened, Faith waked in.
A smile that could slay a warrior, a willowy foresty goodness.
Out of my league entirely except for the spell Shaggy and I had weaved.
She had just had her heart broken by an older man. She had just finished a Masters in Fine Arts. She had just begun to live. A spell of her own, unknown to her. A kindling, smoky and amazing. We even shacked up for a while. I could wake her up at 3am, press against her cheek. Like rain drizzling softly down the split of an apple. And she would smile, and she would move and she would shake and moan.

We would sleep then and our days in a gorgeous and intoxicating elixir of lust and love. A sweet cloud that blotted out the dark. Hand holding, kissing, vanishing into quiet places, giggling and playing. The play was amazing and fluid, we were fluent in each others bodies and at one with our minds. She was amazing. The abortion wasn't. It devastated her.

She went to her sisters house, I knew she wasn't coming back. We were broken and we both learned. I remember meeting her boyfriend, the one she went back to. I gave him the rest of her things. He looked at me and said, "You have been through a lot". I just said "thank you". It didn't make sense really. But somehow it fell from my lips. He understood. I learned a lot in those 6 months.

I obviously still think of her as I just penned her before you. It is strange as there were many. But she is still around in my brain somewhere, unwelcome and lost. An echo, a reminder that I have worth.

15 years passed. As did my marriage, and many jobs and an emigration. A Welsh man in Sydney. How crazy. a lonely Welsh man, in Sydney. It was not abnormal, I have lived in many countries. I have failed many times. But Sydney, that was when the fire came. The fire was called Megan. She was an inspiration. I overheard her and looked up at work, and I fell in love. Again.

It was like being bitten by something. I was older than her. I had changed places with Faith's man in some weird twisted slip of fate. I did not realise that I was empty until I met Megan. That hot blonde powerful bolt of lightning. I still feel the shock, only that shock is different now, it is all I feel. The coincidences kept on coming and so did we. She would wake me at 3am, and press her soft lips to my cheek. We were wild. We had a safe word. We learned and experimented together. I found that thing again, that terrible affliction. That love.

Everything seemed so perfect and natural. We planned to shack up but she never did. I got the place anyway, in case she changed her mind. But she didn't. I don't know why it was a shock as she was always so much higher than me. Out of my league. In retrospect I had precognised the whole thing. I thought I was prepared and I held my shield up to the tsunami of her. It's wake is littered and sharp. A giants broth full of broken toys, and broken dreams. It still doesn't make sense except that I found I could write. So now I write. In fact I write about Megan, I have only ever written about her. This is my 99th item in less than 2 months. I am afraid to write 100.

100, it feels so terminal. I don't know but if someone who loved me wrote 100 things about me, I would probably give them another shot. But here I am and there is nowt on the TV. There is no one around me. There is nothing. I have re-strung that 12 string and I am in rehearsal.

But I am not Megan. And 100 is too special for her.