I hit the far wall with my left knee first and the contact triggered a switch; light flooded the gymnasium and people were running towards me as I collapsed. Two hours sixteen minutes. I had lost 9lbs. The cleaners mopped it off the floor. I was put on a drip, the first days and nights a blur. My legs exploding with the warmth of their own undoing. I saw my mother standing at the foot of my bed, shushing me, laying her hands on me, pushing into me and giving me back a human shape. I’m crying and I miss her and I need her in the dark, and the revelation, as I come through this, is that she
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