All the leaves have turned the colour of peaches and when they fall it’s as if they weigh nothing. An average leaf takes 4 days to reach the ground and when it finally lands it has practically disintegrated leaving only the stalk and the veins. It is considered good luck to find one where all the veins are perfectly intact. Girls wear them in their hair instead of flowers.
Nothing grows quickly anymore; apples are plucked when they are still in miniature form and are eaten as if they were grapes.
No one knows what the time is and nor do they care. It’s like when you are on holiday. The girls wear sandals and the boys try to look up their sun dresses.
This is how time passes now.
Slowly. Very Slowly.
My first experience of death was Mary. I was always told not to put my finger through the bars of her cage but I thought she wouldn’t bite because she loved me. She did bite and hard. The blood from my finger tasted like salt.
We buried her in the garden and I thought I could feel my heart breaking. My dad put a brick on top of the soil and I asked him to take it off. Why he asked. Because she won’t be able to breath I said.
When we moved they knocked the house down and built a motorway on top. I thought of her small bones being picked up in the teeth of a digger.
I thought about that singer who stabbed himself in the heart about 10 years ago and how a few of his fans copied him. I can’t actually remember his name but he mostly played the guitar and sometimes the piano.
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Out of sight out of mind
Don’t cry over spilt milk
Skeleton’s in the closet
A slip of the tongue
Let the cat out of the bag
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Everyday your hair grew a bit longer, until one day, from the back, it was hard to tell whether you were a boy or a girl.
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