Megan Eaves-Egenes

You’re here in my mind. I guess that’s the way it was going to be.

Funny how often I find myself on Quaker Street. It’s a throwaway street that runs parallel to the railway line at Shoreditch High Street, and if you come out of the station and under the bridge, you pass all the drug dealers and wasters smoking hash on the corner by the City Supermarket. There’s never anyone on Quaker Street and it holds a few small wonders. A bubble tea shop. The curving balconies of a council estate that looks art deco (though it surely isn’t). The colourful mural wall along the length of hidden-away Grey Eagle Street, over which loom huge curls of barbed wire that make whatever is behind it look like a prison. And the back entrance to the old Truman Brewery complex. Entering this way lets you avoid the throngs of iced-coffee visitors pouring over cheap sunglasses on Brick Lane. Instead, you skirt around the parking barrier arm and into the north side of the old brewery, from where you can cut to the left and straight into Rough Trade to dig for records.

I am always thinking of you when I walk down Quaker Street. Maybe it’s because I’m bound for a record store, and there is the minutest chance we might run into each other there. Like we did on Christmas Eve that year right before the world ended, a chance meeting on the stairwell in London’s best bookshop – the surprise and genuinely happy sparkle in your eyes was unmistakable and I had to sit down for a few minutes after we hugged and parted to get ahold of myself.

Today was the same sort of London day as that one those years ago. A day when anything could happen. A hot sun shone onto the bare shoulders of women in sundresses, and impending hangovers spilling out the fronts and sides of pubs with no gardens. Out onto the streets, filled with laughter just a little too loud. And kids with melting ice creams.

Yesterday, I took a train to Hampshire to see a friend who has a person of her own, like us. Whenever we see each other, we fall easily into deeply spiritual conversations and find immediate moments of claircognisance and growth. She tells me never to give up, and she believes so hard in you, too. We walked around the lake looking for newborn goslings with their irresistible fluff and sat in her garden with tea listening to a breeze blow through the trees, wondering what comes next.

I listened to our songs on the ride home and let myself fill up with memories – only the good ones. How we laughed about Meat Loaf’s slovenliness and the Egyptian news presenter. Bathrobe man and the way we dreamed about train trips through faraway mountains and along distant rivers. Bumping into you in Waterloo Station that one time – you had your ear buds in and smiled so warmly when you saw me. The way we listened and felt.

I’ve come to believe that our bodies always tell us what to do, and after ignoring my spirit voices long enough, my heart had her way in January. Sick of me trying to shove this all somewhere else, she just burst. And now, after a momentary thought like maybe I shouldn’t write; shouldn’t post; shouldn’t share. After all, why not? I tried and tried and tried again to not.

I’m always listening. To Iceblink Luck, the ghosts and the spirits.