The girl who’s making my coffee tells the other girl
The French one with the same earrings as me (£5.99 from the shop on the high street)
‘George met a girl’
‘Oh no’ (the French one, laughing as in: we all know what that means)
‘Yeah’ (my one) ‘and then she died’.
The French girl’s head swings round the earrings jingle her jaw drops leaving her mouth like that open.
‘Yeah’ my one  tasting something bitter, ‘she died the next day’.
‘That’s awful’.
Then the French girl asks, quickly-quietly like it might not be ok, ‘Did he like her?’
My girl, bent to swirl a pattern in the milk, frowning nods her ‘yeah’.
So this love and death.
And this is how they come and go mostly when we’re not expecting.
What I want to know is about the girl.
The one who died.
I want to know whether she liked George.
And I want to say: Yes.
I don’t know too much about death – or love – but as far as death goes, it would be nice to think there can be sweetness at that gate.