Next

The distance between the heel and the toes lengthens as the sun rises and falls. Am I moving forward? The hedges tell me so by changing. I stop for a moment to be sick and, looking down, I remember that my cousin once threw me into a ditch near here. The water was cold and clean. Looking up from the dark I couldn’t see his hand reaching out until I felt it in mine.

A house comes trembling, rushing towards me at high speed. I think it’s going to hit me in the face, the glittering mica erasing everything that seems to be me, but it slows suddenly smearing the road, the sky, the trees. By stopping the house stops with me.

I am home.

___

David Hayden’s stories have been published in The Yellow Nib and The Stinging Fly. He was short listed for 25th RTE Francis MacManus Short Story prize. He lives in London.