Trying a different shirt each morning and still when I look out the window new holes appearing in the lawn. Impossible to plug them all. Have to leave some of them be. Like anything you leave long enough they become part of the landscape.

Ronnie downstairs drew me a picture of the animal he deems responsible – like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Spotted a delivery of paper last Tuesday, several large boxes. He must have had plenty of space to imagine. God only knows how much paper he used. Once that man’s imagination gets running there’s simply no telling how far his drawings will go or whether he needs to be stopped.

Meanwhile, I’m going through the wardrobes – shelf by shelf, items I’ve no recollection of, others bringing back memories. Some shirts smell of a different age. Smell is a creature that can leap across decades or cosmos. There you are one day thinking you’re old and tucked up in bed and suddenly you’re a child again stealing rhubarb or sniffing a bucket of pond water. It doesn’t matter what people tell you.

‘I never wanted to be a magician,’ Ronnie told me when I first moved in. ‘I wanted to be an actor, but it involved asking people to take me too seriously. I could never look them in the eye.’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about it,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you were great.’ 

We both lost our wives around the same time. I think I loved mine more, but it doesn’t matter now. Neither of us have anyone left to tell us who we are. Our friendship is based on the renunciation of harsh words. We refuse to let the other think a single negative thing about themselves.

‘When it came up and out the ground it was like a fountain crossed with a black bear,’ Ronnie said. ‘What you don’t realise is… This thing… We didn’t stand a chance.’

We talked about building an iron net with a hundred cameras attached. Grasp of a spider, vision of a fat fly. Obviously, it will never get built. Plans are incredible things. No one understands where they go.

I changed four times this morning, four new holes.

Prospect of tarmacking over the entire lot. Ronnie had me ring around for quotes – extortionate, beyond our budget, and it would ultimately ruin my view. I kind of like seeing small craters in the ground at dawn, like declarations of intent, like watching television, like pulling something from a hat or bag that turns out to have more legs than you bargained for, trying to force it back in but the audience has spotted it already, it’s too late.

They never took us seriously anyway. To leave a mark you always have to push something else aside.

We want to see what it is, but at the same time we want to keep on looking for it.

Ronnie’s switched the oven on. I better bring down something of myself. All this time spent looking at new configurations of the lawn is wasteful if you can’t carry something that resembles yourself out of it. Not that Ronnie blames me for my vacancy – that’s not the sort of relationship we have. He recognises that even when I merely occupy space this still serves some purpose. All matter serves a purpose in filling what would otherwise be empty. Or did I hear someone say that nothing can ever truly be empty, that the theory of emptiness has been disproved? There’s always something there. Five more holes by the time tea is served. 

Just like I always say – don’t panic, there’s time to dig and mend. There’s room to celebrate the way we turned out. Each new shirt I try grants me another look at my body in its present living state. If we were made to fill space why do we spend so much time trying to lose weight?

Damp fur left on the grass, remarkable patterns. Even Ronnie can’t do them justice in his drawings. I’m trying to lean into the feeling that comes from knowing you’re heavy, from knowing that whatever comes up and out of the ground is capable of leaving footprints. When you think about it, they’re just another set of holes.

Rob Yates is a writer hailing from Essex. He’s had work appear via Agenda, Bodega, Envoi and other literary magazines both in the UK and in the US. Some of his writing can be found at www.rob-yates.co.uk.