The Compound

by Aisling Rawle

I’ve always been a passive kind of person; it is both my worst quality and the thing that people like most about me.

What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or a tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute? Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an acceptable place to live.

“You’re not exactly a winner, then, are you?”