BLANK

I closed the door behind me and stepped out of my parents' house, into the bright afternoon sunlight. The sun was silver today, low through the trees, casting long autumnal shadows from the cold, blue sky. It glinted from the corner of my sister's car like a hint of some forgotten summer.

I feel very blank at the moment. My skin is bad again - blotchy and cracked like old concrete, probably down to unseen stress. Meanwhile my heart ponders a thousand things inside but I can't figure out how to talk about them. Inside blank, outside cracking up.

I had been playing with my nephew. We have a game where we pretend we're on the radio - Uncle Matthew FM we call it. There's news, weather, traffic, chat and today, music from Fall Out Boy courtesy of YouTube. I like playing with the Niblings. It gives me an excuse to be silly, and unlike some of the grown-ups in my world, my nephews find me funny from time-to-time. But right in the middle of all of that, my Mum turned to my sister and in a quiet voice she didn't think I'd hear, she said:

"Isn't it a shame he doesn't have any of his own."

My heart sank. I suppose we don't always get what we'd like - even when we've prayed for it for thirty years. I would have loved being a dad, honestly. We can though, make the most of what we have. I gulped away a lump in my throat and carried on trying to be a pretend DJ.

More blankness then. I don't have any answers for the world around me - only the cliched things they've all heard before. I am no wiser than anything that can be googled - and no-one has much to add, only sympathy, and sometimes not even that.

"Do you feel like you're too young to be almost forty?" asked Mike today. I felt the need for a careful reply.

"I do, yes. But I'm not really a typical thirty-nine year old so it's a bit difficult to tell whether that's er... normal," I said, whimsically. "Plus I already look much older than forty anyway, so it's confusing."

He didn't say anything. I silently rubbed a hand across my chin and once again felt the thick stubble and cracked, raw skin. What in the world was there to disagree with? I am a dry and weary land, where there is no water.

I reversed down the drive, the cool setting sun blinding me from the front while I replayed all these conversations. Blank, like a sheet of paper - empty of thought, decision or action, yet somehow ready for potential. I gripped the steering wheel, blinked away a tear and drove home.