Broken Wing
“I was born before I died maybe thirty years ago. I have survived nothing of note, nor have I endured. I have lied and blagged my way through my years. As a child I would copy off the dumber kids having noticed two things; they got more attention and that it did not really matter. The biggest thing that ever happened to me as a child was I came home one day, without one of my shoes. I remember only the point the shoe came off and walking away. Death has avoided me, although those around me have all suffered. I was a professional mourner by the age of eighteen. After the shoe affair I trundled on through the next few years relatively easily. I stopped the copying because the previous calculations inverted as I got older. I still cheated quite readily and noticed that, like copying, it only mattered if someone else knew. I kept my first secret when I was eight. Teachers and friends came and went, the carousel never let us know each other for too long. My family moved into the country and I pretended to mind. I used to go out at night, lie down in the wet green damp earth and pretend I had never existed. The stars always seemed too far away to care.
As I rounded the bend into teenage life, everything kind of squeezed in real tight against me for a few years, pinning me, but then just as suddenly, it expanded and I regained my breath. Around this time I discovered if I relaxed, I did not believe in God.”
