SAM (To us.) Sometimes, when he plays music it feels like the whole ceiling is shaking, like the weight of all that sound is pushing down on the foundations. Heavy. His body seeping through the floorboards.
It even looks like it’s becoming baggy. Drooping like flaps of skin, like pants on a washing line. My mum’s face wipes against a bathroom sink. I remember flashes of her face, but it’s just a big blur of make-up. It smells like tissue paper. It smells like the hair on my boys’ heads at night, when I kiss them in their sleep. Little moments where all I want to do is hold them so tight because they’re perfect then. They’re perfect in their stillness and the world in their heads is welcoming and warm and kind. And every snatched moment of sleep is a good thing for them. I wish I could sleep like that. I just watch them, jealous. I watch them with love and disgust on my face. Like she did.
You see the ceiling will fall in and kill us. In the night, when they are sleeping. The whole thing will fall down and take me with it. Just down and down and deeper into the ground. I think I’d like to be there.
It’s all coming in on us and we can’t keep holding it up. I can’t love them any more than I do, and it’s not very much. I’m sorry. Do you believe me? Mum. I said I’m sorry, even though you’re the one that left me.