A stack of photographs lie on the floor. I pick one up. A girl. She is smiling and she is happy. There is laughter in her eyes. She is loud and bold. She is bright and colourful. Vibrant.
She is me, but I hardly recognise her.
She is me.
Before.
I pick up the next one. There is a smile, but the eyes are different. She holds a knowledge in them now, a certainty that the world is little bit worse than she feared. Her light has tapered off.
She is me as I am now.
She is me.
After.
There is a party. With laughter and drink and people I love. The room is packed. There is music and I am spinning.
Then someone comes to talk to me and they bring with them a smell. Maybe it’s the brand of the wine they are drinking, or their deodorant, or whatever they used to wash their hair. Whatever it is it sends a jolt of something horrible coursing through me. It squeezes my chest. It grips my thoughts. It lifts me up and takes me back to somewhere I don’t want to be.
There was another party. With laughter and drink and people who told me they loved me. One of them touched me. I told them not to, but we were alone and they did not stop. They had that smell- that wine, that deodorant, that shampoo… that… They are long gone now.
But that smell.
That fucking smell lets them reach through time and do it all over again.
The room is tiny. The music is far away. The walls are closing in and they are spinning.
