Sipsworth

by Simon Van Booy

Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle⁠—as though even for death there is a queue.

The front garden had been paved over, but cracks in the cement sometimes bled flowers she could name, as though just below the surface of this world are the ones we remember, still going on.

And herein lies the cruel paradox of human existence⁠—not that you die, but that all happiness eventually turns against you.

Reality is all corners and sharp edges. Then a more unsettling truth drops: Helen is no longer able to die.

“It’s like having a baby! At eighty-three!”

“The only consolation of being the last to go,” she admits, “is knowing the people you loved the most won’t suffer the way you do in their absence.”

Helen notices her hand trembling⁠—not because she’s holding a live mouse, but because it’s the first time she’s been touched by another living thing for over twenty years.

there are people in offices, on trains, sipping coffee, talking into mobile phones, falling in love, falling out of love, trying on shoes in shops⁠—alive because of an old woman, far away in England, who has recently adopted a mouse, turned vegetarian, broken the law, and gotten a library card . . . as though preparing to start her life all over again.