Author: Kathleen Bryson

We succumbed to space tourism at last and went last week to see the prickly end of the sun, you know it’s always got those jutting little rays like in a good graphic design, and we petted the end of one sunbeam. It was furry like a sun kitten, oops I mean a sun dog, you know what I mean, something small and cuddly, or maybe you don’t; we petted and stroked that little star till it purred. You, being a former professional face-painter, mentioned that based on this experience you might have in the past constructed something marvellous for a paying child: a beautiful dandelion masterpiece from ear to ear.

Then you grabbed it with both hands, the perspective was working in your favour, you grabbed it with both hands and you started to knead our sun like bread. It was the opposite of yeast; our sun grew smaller and smaller; you held a glowing piece of amber between your thumb and forefinger eventually, and then you swallowed it down. Ouch, you said. It’s hot! Hot-hot, not spicy hot, you clarified, but as if you needed to tell me that.

It is permeating your stomach walls, I told you as a secret, it’s not going to make it to your digestive system. It’s in your uterus now.

The sun was further gone than that by then; it was in your bloodstream; your blood was yellow. You were a yellow-bellied coward. You were a hot-golden-blooded regular gal. Our sun, our Sol, became even more insignificant than that; it was only in your mind; it was in molecules; it was working from an entirely new periodic table of elements, atoms, smaller than the clinic, smaller than the ultrasound, smaller than the insufficient nurse’s acronym for something spontaneous, SAB, outer space.

I think we need some space, you said, after you swallowed our sun.