‘Stumbling’
by Elysia Brown

Buttershaw Business and Enterprise College, Bradford, 2014

You are five. The night is bouncing off the streetlamp down the road. The cool air wraps around your arms, but there is a barrier that prevents the air from reaching your skin, leaving it just short of brushing your bare arms.

Your recent growth leaves your feet too slow and clumsy, disproportionate, so that you stumble and stagger through the green tumble of spiked leaves. Your arms stretch out, light fairy wings that, though imaginary, you can feel stretching from your back. The jagged cut, the result of the Hellish-Haircut-That-Never-Grew-Back, no longer rests on your shoulders, but flows backwards, never quite fast enough to keep up with up with the rest of your body.

Your older brother shouts aloud, his voice tossed to the building wind of the promising storm. The orangey orbs of the farmhouse bob up and down with your movement.

Muscles aching, lungs heaving, feet racing… You can see your brothers, shadowy silhouettes gliding effortlessly through, and your head is pounding, brain expanding to force pressure on your skull. Stumbling, stumbling, tripping, racing, heaving, pushing, aching, running, shouting, chasing, flowing, gliding, lifting, flying, soaring.

Stumbling.

Falling.

Fading.