Directions to a Person

For about a year I could have given anyone directions to her front door from memory.

Off the main road at the chemist with the cracked sign. Past the house with the dog that only barks at bicycles. Left where the tarmac gives up and becomes the honest version of a road. Her gate is the blue one, or it was blue once; now it is mostly the idea of blue held together by rust and habit.

I gave those directions to taxi drivers, to friends dropping me off, once to a courier who was very much not being paid enough to find that street. Each time I felt a small private pride, the way you do when you know a place so well it has stopped being a place and started being a person.

We are not together anymore. Nothing dramatic — just two people who ran out of the same direction to walk in.

But last month I was in a car with someone new, and they missed a turn, and before I could stop myself I said, "no, not that one, it's the next left, where the road gets bad." They looked at me. I had never been to their part of town in my life.

Some maps stay in your hands after the destination closes. You just stop saying them out loud.