She washes her mother with water and with love. Gently caressing the body that looks like someone she once knew, but her mother’s mind has already gone ahead and waits for the soul to return. She cleans away the saliva from the mouth that once used to chastise and kiss and smile.
He dreads the sun coming up as it means another day and another night of little sleep. Somewhere between being ten years of age and this morning, it all got complicated. The knots are too tightly tied to try to undo them anymore. He can hear the car next door starting up – the sign that he has to do it all….all over again.
If it wasn’t for the kids she would have left months ago, maybe years. They were happy once. They were in love back then but all she did was turn her head away, take her eye off from where she was going and they slipped away from each other.
Okay, so he’s not a kid anymore but he tells himself that the injections he puts in his leg every morning are increasing his superpowers. Yesterday he told himself he could see through peoples’ clothing. It made him smile and it greased another sticky day.
She’s 17 and gravity hasn’t hit her yet. She doesn’t know what waits around the corner but she is happy with her family and her dog called, Bertie. Oh, and her boyfriend.
The old lady lives two doors up from no one. She’s been there since the war and the neighbours have come and gone and although she used to know everyone, she locks her door against the night. When she goes, she’ll go like Eleanor Rigby. Then she hums what she thinks is the tune.
It’s the end of another day and as the heads lie on the pillow, or the sofa or the street, everyone should be standing up there on the podium, arms aloft for a job well done.
To get through a day, any day deserves a gold medal.
bobby stevenson 2019
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