The Yew

fiction, by Len Lukowski

Everyone thought it was a bad idea to go on the trip. Of course, I’d already said yes.

‘I know we’re not getting back together,’ I told concerned friends when they heard I was going camping with Roisin, ‘and I’m OK with that. I just want us to still be mates.’ Even as I was talking, images flashed through my mind of us kissing deeply in the tent. I packed my cock at the bottom of my rucksack, just in case.

‘We’re so lucky,’ Roisin declared as we got off the train, gesturing to the sun for once shining on the grey Yorkshire town. Climate change, I thought, we’ll all be dead soon.

‘Yes, we are.’

Roisin and I had been split up for over a year and I hadn’t tried to move on. Why would I? No one was as good. We still did all the things we used to – seeing bands, friends, the pub – apart from the thing I wanted to do the most. Almost every day, I watched her eyes flash electric with full-hearted excitement, about anything really. A book, a place, an obscure fact. Roisin had her dark moments – she was a Sylvia Plath fan – but on the whole she loved life. My attitude was more ambivalent, which is why I needed her. It was rare I met anyone so uninhibited and self-assured, unless they were some tiresome cis guy. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but it was Roisin who dumped me.

The path was quiet on the first day, despite the glorious sun. We followed the river out of the town, through a dense wood, then ascended. The higher we got, the sparser the landscape became. Every so often Roisin would point things out to me. ‘She used to live up there. She’s buried in the churchyard now. People leave pens on her grave.’ ‘This is what Wuthering Heights was based on,’ she told me, as we approached a disused farmhouse. When we got closer, we saw a plaque stating that the building probably had not inspired Wuthering Heights. ‘Oh.’

‘What do those blue-plaque wankers know?’ I put my arm around her shoulders. We huddled for a photo, sat on the ruins, where a window had once been.

When I started going out with Roisin, I tried to do everything to be like her. I mean she was femme and I was transitioning to male, but that aside, I became vegan, watched Cohen Brothers films, pretended to care about suicidal poets and Russian novels. I did love that she was so passionate about all that stuff, even if I didn’t quite get it. I felt uncultured compared to her which made me desire her more. I thought eventually I would learn to love all the things she did, I just needed more time to understand.