I want to go home.
Except, when I say I want to go home, what I mean is that I yearn for those long summer days where the sky was always clear, and the sun shone down. You’d have a Mr Whippy in hand, the ones with the flake and the raspberry sauce. The Olympics was on, and we spent hours watching gymnastics and diving while making an ill-fated scarecrow. Gordon Brown was the Prime Minister and you didn’t know anything about him, only that he had incredible eyebrows and that he seemed a bit boring but that you were sure he was probably quite nice? There’s a recession but you don’t even know what that is, and even if you did, you still probably wouldn’t understand it. Your afternoons are filled with sneaky sessions of Neopets on the family computer, and fighting with your sister, and learning to bake with your mum.
It is 2008 and no one is sick yet, and no one has died yet, and you don’t know the horrors this world can bring. The disability that lurks in your body has not yet taken hold, and you are still able to run, jump, leap, without the threat of a dislocation. You are young and naïve on the cusp of teenagehood, and you still believe that the world is good, and you are safe. You are safe here. You are safe in your body. You are loved.
I want to go home.
Sarah R. New (she/her) has recently been published in journals including the Hoogly Review, Wishbone Words, Gastropoda, and in Broken Olive Branches, a Palestinian charity anthology. Her Gothic horror novella, Amissis Liberis, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May 2024. Her travel memoir, The Great European Escape is available for free from https://sarahrnew.wordpress.com/.
