Curiosity types his name into a search engine. In the first search result his name is alongside dates. A start date. And an end date. The ghost from my past is a ghost. The obituary says, 'Above all he was an ethical man.' I pined like needles for him in post-modern Russian literature class. Victory the day he gifted me The Master and the Margarita on the concrete steps at university. It all ended with three nights in Prague, hate snaring our tired legs at Kafka's cottage, sand running through our blood on the Charles Bridge. This romantic city a nightmare, trapped together in baroque loathing for three nights. Sacrifice of the ethical man for a wild year. He'd written a short story, described us as sugar-coated pills on a bookshelf, he'd told his sister he hated my bravado, my phone ran out of battery, we broke up at the airport on the way to Prague. He'd organised my visas, spent hours at the Russian and Mongolian embassies. I took my passport. Freedom. More men. Watching the sunrise. Fireflies by the Great Wall. Not a care for anyone. No care for the ethical man or lynching hearts. He'd said he had a feeling he wouldn't live to forty. It gives me shivers to discover he'd been right. Our time was mis-matched. Regret weaves a text-based tapestry with lines from Tolstaya, Bulgakov and Chekhov, she says 'narcissism is a sin' and misplaces a 'g'.
