Sense it, the anthem of the sun. But I’ll wish for plain green grass please, not this type ignited to lime. Not this false blue that boasts about life because, when tapped, we ring with echoes of that July. Three years, my mother told me. Don’t expect too much yet. Things will get faster. Thoughts will dot to dot. I’d even started to imagine these friendly workers within me—’maintenance’ on white overalls, blood-cell-red hard hats, whistling as they polish, stepping back to admire the shine, planting high fives. So dazed by my mindlessness, they must be forgetting to wind me up to the point where I’ve been thinking oh my god, what if, one day, I just stop? Turn to stone. If sadness acts like cholesterol, I could blacken and blank, hardening from the inside out. It could happen at Central Station near the clock, contemplating the piano that watches the Starbucks, or just at Tesco buying marked-down yoghurt. And there I’ll stand, for all of time. Passers-by, slightly derailed from family-shaped trajectories might briefly be struck—wow, I mean—how real she looks. Three years, my mother told me (I nurse these words to my chest), even when the sun is anthemic, it will all once again make sense.

Shortlisted flash fiction, summer 2017