I Let You Go

by Clare Mackintosh

Gradually, without my noticing, my grief has changed shape; from a raw, jagged pain that won’t be silenced to a dull, rounded ache I’m able to lock away at the back of my mind. If it is left there, quiet and undisturbed, I find I’m able to pretend that everything is quite all right. That I never had another life.

I can’t recall anyone ever wanting to share this part of my life: art was always something to be shut away in another room, something for me to do on my own, as though it didn’t belong in the real world.