Mammy says she’s got the sun in her tummy. It’s big and round and hard. But the doctors have to get it out because the sun is too big to stay in a tummy.
‘I won’t be gone long, baby girl,’ Mammy says. And she promises to come home with the sun for me to meet.
I wave until the car is out of sight. The sky goes dark as they turn the corner. Mammy and Daddy and the sun.
*
I don’t think he means to, but Daddy wakes me up in the night. His footsteps are heavy like hooves. He speaks to Auntie Lou outside my bedroom door, his voice wet. The sun has died.
I lie awake, brain fizzy thinking how we’ll live without it. All the things we’ll have to learn to do in the dark.
When the morning comes, and the light peeks through my curtains I smile. Daddy was wrong. I feel silly for worrying really. And now I think about it, even if the big sun hadn’t come up, everything would still be okay. Because we could just let the sky borrow ours.
Martha Lane is a writer by the sea. She writes extensively about grief and nature and all things unrequited. Most of her stories can be found online at marthalane.co.uk and her novella, Lies Over The Ocean, is available to buy at Amazon.
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