Page 78 of Undefined Terms

I wake to the scratch of the pen. The lamp’s still on, the small one. Celyn’s sat up against the wall. Notebook in the lap. Pen moving. Slow. Word, line. Word, line.

I don’t sit up. Don’t speak.

Celyn knows I’m awake. The breathing’s different, that’s how. I haven’t perfected the awake-but-pretending-asleep Celyn has.

The pen stops. Celyn looks at me. The face still has no makeup. The hair flat against the side of the head from the pillow. The eyes red.

‘I write definitions.’ The Welsh, quiet. ‘Sometimes for words that are mine. Sometimes for words I haven’t found.’

‘Yeah.’ And I get it, a bit. Celyn’s been making their own words since long before me: a shelf of these notebooks at the flat, every one a record of someone building the language nobody handed them. It’s not a sad thing. It’s a trade, same as mine.

‘Tonight I tried to write one. Couldn’t.’

I don’t say which one. The asking’s the thing Celyn taught me not to do.

Celyn looks at me. Looks at the page. Looks at me again. The mouth opens. Closes. The pen sits balanced between two fingers.

‘I’m not asking you to read it.’

‘I know.’

Celyn turns the notebook. Holds it open for me to see. The crossed-out word at the top. Below it, three more attempts, all crossed out. Below those, blank.

I look. Crossed-out shapes. Don’t try to read them.

‘You don’t have to show me.’

‘I know.’

The notebook closes. Goes back on the nightstand. Pen on top, no cap, the way it always is.

Celyn slides down. Under the duvet this time. Hoodie up. Eyes on me.

‘Stay where you are.’

‘I’m not moving.’

The lamp goes off. The flat’s dark. Outside the orange streetlight, the rain’s stopped, the road’s wet, the wet shines.

The hand finds mine again under the duvet. Fingers cold.

Celyn falls asleep before I do. The breath evens. The grip loosens, doesn’t let go.

I stay awake.

Above the bed the crack in the plaster’s a different shape in the orange, not the line I know, a wider thing, soft at the edges. The flat’s a shape I don’t recognise from the dark, and I’m a shape I don’t recognise from the inside, and Celyn’s hand is in mine. That’s the only thing the same.

I haven’t fixed anything. I haven’t said anything. I lay down. The hand’s there.

Tightness under the ribs I haven’t named. Right size to carry but I didn’t know it was mine. I carry it. The breath goes in. The breath goes out. The hand’s there.

In the morning I’ll go to work: the drill, the level, the east wall.

Celyn’ll write the definition or won’t.

Either way the notebook’s on the nightstand and the cap’s still off the pen.

The orange shifts on the ceiling. The hand in mine is still cold. Mine’s not.