Sipsworth

by Simon Van Booy

and she tried to go out every day, even when it poured. But life for her was finished.

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.

Memory has never come to her like this in the physical world. It has always been something weightless⁠—strong enough to blow the day off course, but not something she can reach for and hold on to.

Everyone she has ever loved or wanted to love is gone, and behind a veil of fear she wishes to be where they are.

sobbing

Those who in life had held back in matters of love would end in bitterness. While the people like her, who had filled the corners of each day, found themselves marooned on a scatter of memories. Either way, for her as for others, a great storm was approaching. She could sense it swollen on the horizon, ready to burst. It would come and wash away even the most ordinary things, leaving no trace of what she felt had been hers.

After all these years. Everything that has happened. To think there is a place where your child’s birthday cake still waits to be eaten.

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

Although the animal doesn’t appear, she can hear it faffing around, drumming the cardboard with its paws, chewing on something that makes a flicking sound. The lonely creature is likely frightened, stranded there in a sitting room on Westminster Crescent, unaware there is someone listening, someone watching beyond the small, dark place it has come to live out the last of its days.

She expects to hear or see something, but the miniature world below is perfectly silent, as though the creature knows its life is finished and has accepted it.