I’m bereft at the grief-grey stripe, the immensity of black, how much further I’d have to fall to feel an absence so deep.
I’m bereft at the grief-grey stripe, the immensity of black, how much further I’d have to fall to feel an absence so deep.
The four of us sat together on the bed he and I had shared, where we woke to classical music, where he brought me coffee, where their bright faces greeted us in the morning …
“It’s important to be calm and quiet because we don’t know how these dogs will react to children,” I remind my six-year-old in the parking lot of the animal shelter.
“Jam-butty land” her estate called ours, mocking what our parents fed us so they could scrimp for the payments on basic brick boxes to pass on to us.
The huge cruise ship casts its morning shadow on the dock. Through a metal net we see a tent on the tarmac, rugs and mattresses on the floor, a book – a Quran?
Little fingertips prod my eyelids, scouting before the assault.
“I’ve brought you some red roses from my garden, Mum.” “I don’t want those. They symbolise death,” she retorted, grumpy as ever.
Last week I only dared watch, but now, under the baubled lights that sway over a tree-lined square swollen with longing, I buckle my black tango shoes, hold my breath like a platform diver preparing to plunge in, wonder if tonight I will be asked.
On Victoria Day mama warned me about playing with fireworks in the park.
She wandered the pathway into a clearing, startled wide awake by a tangle of brightness — lilies, zinnias, and daisies.
I saw the tiny bright pink pill slide from the pocket of his khaki pants and onto his seat, then drop to the floor next to his desk.
Forty-four years ago when we moved into this home, I found two potatoes on the basement floor.
On my last night in Trincomalee I couldn’t sleep. I lay frozen on the hard single bed, wide-awake and petrified.
No blood, but no movement either. Ambulance has already arrived.
She came out crying, holding her right arm. To my untrained eye, nothing seemed broken.
The tree surgeon inspects the trunk. He points to the outgrowths: troublesome.
My patient's oxygen levels were stable, yet he hunched over the edge of the bed, laboring to breathe. His eyes searched mine for answers.
Resisting the urge to peek at my defined abdominal muscles, I ripped an oily chip into quarters and apprehensively put a piece in my mouth, taking a deep breath.
My sister lies dying. She cradles a rag doll. “It looks like you,” she says.
The tooth still aches, unbearably, then bearably, the inner workings of my own mouth gaslighting me as I mix the pancake batter.