ALL over again she feels the wrench of her belly, the low pull of her loins, a cradling slew of ice hot pain, acute, high, incisively sharp and so ruthlessly, accurately, exquisitely deep, it becomes almost a pleasure, though not even at all; followed by a sudden, muscle-tearing ejection, a final inner roar to threaten the inner ear; blessed, bursting release, a barreling swollen emptiness now, pain set aside, pleasure beating pain, pleasure thwarting enormous, cloaking fatigue; pleasure, pleasure, pleasure…

AS they bickered around her, she smiled without moving, blinked while her eyes stayed still. She felt the tear without the moisture.

FROM the left and from the right, noises and lights, smells and tastes, all switching and swapping places with ease, senses like relay runners, ribbons in the wind. Water balloons bursting, carousels rising, carriages racketing around their aching, bolted tracks. The caramel apple gleams and smells of burnt; its case is brittle, collapsing against her teeth; sticking to her lips as the soft pulp below yields to pressure. There is a flash of a camera, and the image is on the film, and the film is at the store, and then the print is in the frame, for a while, then in the album, later, then lost, some place, in storage, somewhere. But the smells are still there, now.

SOMEONE shouts at someone else while someone yet again insists everyone who is talking should be listening to them. No one, of course, is listening to the things she cannot say, but that’s okay, because she doesn’t really want to share them.

THEY’RE running through the familiar rising terrain, nipping over raised roots, darting down paths past leaning trees, whooping as they go; calf muscles strain up hillocks, bloat as the legs they’re sat in shudder into clefts, where they’re falling, rolling, laughing, kicking golden autumn leaves, throwing them too, then rising, shrieking, and running some more, laughter all around them, sunshine through the trees, branches against blue sky. Soon it is time to eat; but tomorrow will be the day to go home.

LIKE a croupier with his cards, she neatly stacks and restacks the memories, intertwining and folding them into no comprehensible order other than her own, alacrity imbued with calm. She is utterly aware as her legs lose their feeling and equally disinterested. Soon be there. The arms, for some reason, went ages ago.

FASTER now, yet each as easy. The soft dry host upon her tongue. Pineapple, her favourite fruit. The sting of a nettle. A drawn-out ferry horn. The touch of a hand inside her own. A crucifix sat high up above an altar. A sea, one summer, dark waves and bustling white crests. A disco ball. Napkins. Thick, meaty gravy. Promotion. A first day. A cold hand into a postbox. Signing her name. Tennis. The breath-like touch of hot summer air.

THEY bickered and ignored her, as she knew they should. They’ll need their snapshots, too, she thought. And so she stopped; forever.