Ivory

 Ivory is the 14th Wedding Anniversary. It seems like an odd choice - celebrating your love with fatally aggressive dentistry on some hapless pachyderm. What is ivory even used for, except as an allegory in mawkish songs about racial unity? The yellowing keys on pub pianos? There are no pianos in pubs any more - its all ivory plasma screens now. 

I admit I've had limited experience of ivory, having never been Clive of India. I'm fully intending buying a mouthful of new teeth in the New Year. The smashed crockery currently littering my gums is a personal and professional embarrassment. You try having a Zoom meeting with a 25 year old Hollywood business executive when you're the living embodiment of The Big Book of British Smiles. You'd have got that reference, Kelly, though you wouldn't have known what a Zoom meeting was. That's how long you've been gone. The world's gone to shit since you left - you wouldn't recognise the place, and you'd barely recognise me. I'm older than my years. I'm older than anybody's years. I'm older than light years, though my "light" years are a distant memory. 

It seems disrespectful to go on about how old I am when you never even got to be forty. Sorry. 

I remember your ivory. That smile would light up the room like someone chucked a flare through the window. Every night was fireworks night. We smiled all the time, and if I've achieved anything in my life, the thing I'm proudest off is making you smile. And not just smile: roar. Head thrown backwards, legs kicking. Though, honestly, you always found your own jokes funnier. And you were right - they were. 

I think this is the first time in fourteen years I'm not going to be able to visit the grave on the anniversary. I hope its not a precedent - life is, momentarily, getting in the way. 

In itself a cruel irony.