Please

The woman in the panda hat looks so mean. She is sitting opposite me on the train. I am going back to the falling over place.

It is abrasive to look at her dark face framed by fluffy white ears. Like how I feel about going back.

I want to see the person who held my hand. But I fear remembering why she had to help me up from the fall.

I try to explain to them that I was not there. That I was neither in or out of my head. I was absent. They look at me absently. I scream in my head. No, not that like. Completely gone. Nothing. Nobody. Nowhere.

One minute I am a sitting behind the curtains thinking this is great. I am not gagging. The next I am eating mini biscuits in a wheelchair in the hall. Crying.

I think I must have been gone for a whole day. Not that it was a loss.

More a waste.

It’s amazing how it becomes easier and easier. A packet of tissues. A clean pair of socks. An umbrella cover.

I acknowledge it was a slip using the bin in the toilets and holding the can in my hand.

I am getting tired. Old. Complacent.

It’s strange how this order is so congruous. Not a mean lady in a panda hat. A handful lady at the top of the stairs. All so fitting now. The security guards pass. They know my name. I answer. That’s what you do.

Not that my name belongs to me. It is absent from my presence.

Apparently I told her all about that. The person who held my hand.

I sit on the train trying not to look at panda woman. She scares me. They all say I still have a pretty face. That makes me feel sad. Like there is something left to salvage. Although I never want to look mean however far I fall.

I remember little things. I remember little things. I remember little things.

Then I think of the park bench. The brick wall. The kitchen floor.

How when I fall I use the ink to say what I truly want.


I wrote three little words on the chart.

One of them was please.