In the time it takes me to fall down a set of stairs my mother has prepared dinner in the other room.
She’d thought she’s heard the sound of one of the pans falling in the kitchen but doesn’t realise she’s been subject to my demise.
I remember dying straight away and then horrifically reliving over and over again. It’s this skipped record of images and sounds of the crunching of your bones and the crushing of your limbs that makes passing so horrible. And it is a passing. Into some new realm which I haven’t discovered yet. It’s very dark and I’m all alone.
I am reliving this cycle when my mother weeps at my tangled body.
When people ask, they’ll say: she was so happy. She was such a happy child.
ENDS
PHILIPPA MANNION 