This tiny corner

Tomorrow I have to call the electricity company, get an extension for the washing machine hose and do the shopping, can you help me remember that at least? I ask X. Coordination, I tell him, when we’re coordinated we can do anything. But in a free moment, in the briefest fall out of time I sink into my armchair and look around at my new flat, my orderly possessions, and wonder how I even got this far in life, how I managed to organise even this tiny corner of reality with him around. How do other people do it? The closer I look, I tell him, the more it all dissolves into mist, and the closer you come, with your rank breath and your poisonous whispers.