I opened the bathroom door and you were there on the landing, downlit by the two/eighths of the bulbs that still worked. We stood and read each other in the half/light. A caesura on the line of carpet cut by a cough. You were seven and three/quarters and at that age where the lengthening fringe was a sign of your slow withdrawal from the light of childhood. That age that sees the hardening of the soft edges of heel and knee and heart. I saw myself in your eyes, doubled and reduced to the size of a pupil and wondered How much of you was me? How much of you was her? ‘Can we have a chat?’ you said, pulling your hair over your eyes, seeing if it would reach your nose. We lay on the thin pillows on your bottom bunk staring up at the glow-in-the dark planets you had put on two/seventeenths of the wooden slats above. ‘What are fractions?’ you asked I was stuck, like when you asked me if germs had minds or if a feather was heavy enough to fall through a cloud. Night time brought out the porosity in you, an urge to fight the void of curfews with questions. The wait for answers always made your mouth open, the two/twentieths of your new teeth askew like old headstones twisted from their symmetry by the roots of the churchyard oak. ‘Fractions are a piece,’ I said ‘when a whole is broken into pieces’. The coughing began again in the bedroom beyond us. ‘Is heartbreak a fraction?’ you asked.
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Wow, this is powerful and adore the format. Well done, hella effective.
When I was young, maybe even when I was seven and three/quarters, I called them ‘fractureds’. This is such a beautiful and poignant piece. With love.
It is especially poignant, reading this now
> if a feather was heavy enough to fall through a cloud.
great question.