David Bowie has died and there’s been a heartbreak fluttering in the wings for months.

David Bowie has died and I’m back to Valentine’s Day 2004
leaping in Wellington rain with one of my oldest friends singing along
Ziggy himself on stage mere metres away.

David Bowie has died and you have cancellations all morning so we go out for breakfast. The café is quiet, the chef your best friend.

David Bowie has died and I buy potting mix to repot the succulent I decorated for Christmas. I take my time to cycle it home, stop to sit in the shade of a eucalypt and write.

David Bowie has died and we’ve bought an outdoor table on ebay
drive to collect it from a neighbourhood of overgrown lawns and car collections
trash thrown in heaps on the footpaths.

Username ‘kewlshit’ is burly and mean. By god I bet he’s done some things he shouldn’t have over the years. But he’s restored the table to hipster-appealing charm, calls a younger man his “servant” as he carries it out shrouded bizarrely in leopard skin print.
It’s been 37 degrees and raining this evening.

David Bowie has died and we listen to all our favourite songs of his, remembering all the other times we listened to those songs, where we were and how they became so. I wish I knew you years ago.

David Bowie has died and we drink gin and tonics, watch the last half of The Godfather which we’d been saving from the night before.

David Bowie has died and I can’t stop admiring our new table, our first joint purchase, white and mint stripes on a wrought iron base. I wonder how something I love could have been created by a man I have nothing in common with.

And then I wonder if he too listened to Bowie tonight and which song struck him in the hardened heart as he sang along, what line reminded him of younger days or that party where he met that girl he fell for, the girl he perhaps bought the leopard skin for.

I wonder which album cover sticks in his mind, captures his imagination the most, which is his favourite lyric, his favourite Bowie quote and how he heard the news tonight, how it stopped him
before he had to get on with it all.