Beneath it all, beneath the smiles and the gentle resting of hands, I was water. I was a prayer. I had accepted the fate that was uncurling and I was imitating an obelisk. Starchy. Between the Saturday and the Sunday, it was the hour of it. No one knew, until it was in retrospect. Sucking on gums. The hand released from under the blanket, with its familiar ring, now still. The carved diamond glinting in the low light of the lamp. There was a finality in the way you had said god bless and in the way you had said goodnight. I had focussed on the door, then left for school, my head pounding like running footsteps on pavement, with the urge to move, to evangelise your makeshift bedroom, to bend open the roof and airlift you out of your disillusion. But I was not a brain surgeon. I was a girl. And, for a little girl, it could only be a waiting game.

I'd waited for the time frame. I'd waited for the countdown. I curled up into a spiral, eyes wide and estimated the hour of it. It was early morning when the stretcher arrived. The men in black suits looked like slugs, top hats in hands, bowed heads. You looked like you were made of chalk. You looked like you had never been living, had never blinked, had never made a joke. They carted you down the hall and out through the back door. It was their business. You were their product now. Reality fell away and I found myself lying face up under my bed, staring at the brown weave like it was a magic eye puzzle. I had left my feet in the hallway. I had swallowed my tongue. The bones in my body had disintegrated. Still, my eyes fought for clues.

At some point, it had grown dark. My father picked me up with hands like great white handkerchiefs, parachutes. He laid me, paper thin, onto my mattress, touching my grey face delicately. There will be big black cars in the morning, he said, get some rest. I kept inhaling and exhaling. With the light peeking through the crack in the curtain as my sun dial, I memorised the ceiling until

I careened forward into a genuflection, tracing a cross with my finger over my chest, my Sunday routine on a Thursday. I was pretty sure my ears were coming away slowly so that only vague noises could get in: the shuffle of footsteps, the connection of wood with wood, the curtain pulled shut on you. I worried I was suffering an echo when an apology got stuck in my eardrum. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm so sorry. A snake of suit trousers and black skirts, a procession of waists past me, with the occasional solemn pat on the head. The line dispersed and clusters formed, everyone clutching paper plates with sausage rolls and cake. With drooping eyelids that wouldn't close, I pondered what I was supposed to be celebrating with them.

Over time, I found words for you, saved them up, nurtured them into sentences. I ensnared you in the jaws of a string of poetry and then, wet-faced, finally, I fell out of consciousness in the same way a person. falls. down. dead.