Slow Summer Months

dust drifting in the light. They danced by the lush green leaves of my indoor plants: they were my pride and joy. I gazed fondly at my tall, Asian tree, and the shorter, equally vibrant, Australian bean plant. They appeared to glow with life. I breathed slowly. My lungs ached; my body ached. I closed my eyes as pain swept through me. Every breath was exhausting. I wished I didn’t need to. My lungs felt so weak – as though a truck had driven over them repeatedly through the night. Now they were crushed, and each inhale left me feeling weaker than the one before. I wanted to stop. How much I wanted the pain to go in that moment: how much I wanted the exhaustion to be again? The house was silent for now. My sister was away. No-one outside – no cars parking, no neighbours chatting. But there was the sound of birdsong and the humming of summer insects. I sighed again. There was beautiful peace that almost made the pain alright. My stomach growled. I was very hungry – but I had been unable to move from the sofa for a few hours. I should have eaten at least a couple of hours ago. I opened my eyes and glanced across the coffee table. My work laptop stood open but asleep, my notes scattered beside it. I looked at me. I reached one hand out from under my warm red blanket and picked the sweet purple kitten up and feeling a warmth spread through my chest. Only yesterday I had spoken with my mother. I’d not been well then either. It had taken a huge effort of will to sit myself at the table and make the video call. Talking was painful and exhausting. ‘It’s all in your head, sweetheart,’ she told me. ‘Just think differently about it and it will go away. Believe you are well, and you will be. You’re creating this yourself.’ I felt a pang in my heart and a lump in my throat. I drew my gaze away from the purple kitten and up to the white ceiling. Think differently. I wanted to go outside. I missed running. I missed jumping and climbing. – insistent. I needed food. I had to move. Slowly, I placed my little kitten onto the coffee table, to watch over my notes. Then, with every muscle in my body screaming resistance, I eased myself up onto my elbows, then further up until I moving. I collapsed back to catch my breath. How I wished there was someone to help me. Sweet memories trickled into my mind of days strewn with rose petals – and a wonderful man. A man who had, for a brief time, looked out for me. His gentle hands had soothed me and his soft of his perfect features with the greatest clarity – so great it could be that, for the briefest of moments, he really was with me again. My heart ached for him. I remembered the joy of preparing food for him; the way he held me in his arms; kissing him goodbye each day he left for work. The sadness I felt tangled with the pain in my lungs and body. Food. I needed to get to the kitchen. I was wheezing. I could hear my lungs gurgling. Why must I go on breathing? Struggling against waves of pain and exhaustion, I pushed myself up onto my feet. My heart hammered in my chest. Not far to the kitchen. I felt excited at the prospect of food. Avocado. That was my favourite. It had been my favourite for so many years now. Avocado toast was the highlight of my day. Perhaps it would give me the energy I needed to sit outside and enjoy the sun for a short while. I could lie out on my special woollen rug and doze in the sunlight to the sound of the busy bees. kling on the draining board; the surfaces were clear. The faint scent of sweet rhubarb cleaning

spray hung in the air. I set about preparing the toast – bread into the toaster, knife out for slicing avocado and fresh tomatoes, and a bundle of pungent basil for garnish. I liked a thick layer of margarine on my toast – thick enough that even the hot bread could not melt through all of it. It was all just as I’d once prepared lunch for my man. My back ached as I moved. It wanted me to lie down again. My hands were weak and shook. I arranged the slices of avocado carefully on the margarine-lathered toast, covering every inch of bread with the creamy fruit. After the avocado came the generous sprinkling of my favourite pink Himalayan salt, then the thin slices of salad tomato, followed by plenty of coarse, ground black Six months earlier... I was sitting on the train. It was dark outside the carriage window and we rattled steadily along the railway line, surging unstoppably northwards. This carriage was quiet. Not many people were on this route. I gazed out into the blackness. I felt like a shell of who I’d once been. My body felt crippled – weak, skeletal: hollow. Each breath was agony and my heart ached. Tears pricked at my eyes. Christmas had passed me by like a knife slicing me open. Now there was a lot of mess. A lot of mess and a lot of pain. I allowed my head to sink back onto the headrest. Train seats were never quite right. There was a spike of pain in my neck. Why could this breath not be my last? Present day... ‘You’ve trained yourself to be ill,’ my mother had told me. ‘It’s not real.’ Not real. I had managed to get myself outside. I had unrolled my special woollen rug on the warm grass, made a hot cup of Oolong tea, and was now lying on my back with my eyes shut. My sister’s grinning face rose up in the cool blackness behind my eyelids. She was grinning because I’d conced ill health funny? I didn’t know. It felt cruel. It hurt me. These days, she paid about as much atten or a word of greeting when she got home. How had my life come to be this way? A million reasons drifted through my mind. I wanted to dissolve into the ground – I felt as though I was already part of the way there. Was happiness possible while in pain? I allowed a smile onto my face. Happiness could lie in a cup of hot Oolong. I not heard? That I did not know. cult? Why did it hurt to move? Six months later... It had been the toxic black mould growing behind the furniture in my bedroom that had made me I’d discovered the mould growing thick behind my bed and behind every chest of drawers. I’d never thought to move the furniture around – or perhaps I would have discovered it much earlier. A year of suffering caused by something so seemingly tiny. Although much has changed since the summer, the pain is still with me. And my mother still tells me none of it is real.

tive writing, and food. She studies physics because she wants to understand how everything works (but has only accumulated more confusion in the course of her studies), she writes because her brain constantly feeds her with story ideas, and she cooks and bakes because food is pure happiness to her. In the future, she hopes to publish the top of a tall building with a good view.