my Uncle Fortune once asked me if I’d ever been in love

he was visiting me at the time

my first stay in Strathmore Psychiatric Hospital

i told him I had

just the once

Lisa was her name

I was still at the school and fourteen and it was a Saturday morning just after half-time when I first saw her. She drifted in out the mist and stood near me on the touchline. She was wee, her hair skelped in tight, a red Harrington and her jeans sitting just right

over her loafers and I couldn’t stop looking her way.

Five minutes later she was gone.

But Lisa was in the school on the Monday morning, in my class and sitting next to Wee Sandra, the two of them busy talking to each other. Lisa was soft spoken. English sounding. North maybe. And as she wandered out when the class was done she was still chatting to Wee Sandra. I stayed stuck to my seat and said nothing.

Not a word.

And it stayed that way. Me not speaking. Maybe my confidence was already shot. Maybe it was the bother with Uncle Dode that’d done it, the evening he’d made his way late and uninvited into my room.

Maybe that was why the words were nowhere near leaving my mouth whenever Lisa was about, why I was glued still and sticky with nerves.

Away from the school it was the same. In the park, Lisa smoking fags on the swings with Wee Sandra and Wee Sandra calling me over for a word. Still I couldn’t open up. I kept my eyes down, my ball at my feet and jogged past the two of them in silence till eventually Wee Sandra stopped giving me tips.

Pointers. Stopped telling me how much Lisa liked me and that I should maybe look up once in a while from that ball of mine.

But I never did.

I never looked up.

And I said nothing.

I kept my head down and stayed silent and three months on Lisa had disappeared back down to England.

It was years before I saw her again.

But I did see her.

The once.

It was just before this first stay in hospital.

I was lying in my bed and staring up at the ceiling. Three nights without a sleep and well on my way to a fourth when I saw her. Lisa was looking back at me, smiling as she floated down, took my hand and promised to stay close till the storm had passed.

Seconds later she was gone. But I believed her.

I still do.