‘You crack an atom, what’s left? Particles,
bits. It’s like Meccano: proton, neutron, quark.
Don’t you see..
The things you knew. The rest of us set our horizons at the girls’ school down the road. Whatever you dreamed of, you left us in the dark. (‘I couldn’t follow him’, one friend confessed after the fact, then ‘Why? The waste, the waste! then again, ‘Did he know something we don’t?’) '... . there’s nothing to it’, your pale face lit on a smile, ‘A molecule? A galaxy? Nothing but little obstacles in space.’ As clear as mud. Just for a moment, though, your laughter shook me. It was wild— touch of vertigo. I saw the solid world come unput at our feet. I didn’t see the logic: how you would leave behind friends, family, a fixed address, even your books, until one tactful line in the Hatched-Matched-&-Despatched: DIED SUDDENLY. No note, ...
