Fuck. Not now. Not as. Fuck. As my granny’s being lowered. Fuck. Not now. As she’s being lowered into her grave. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Clutching the grave stone I sink down. My left hand motioning sickeningly backwards, against my will. Again and again, moving, jerking. It is like a futurist painting, all the stages of motion seen at once. My right hand is doing it now. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck; I’m dying. Sickening nausea at the foot of the grave stone. Need to go to hospital. Now. Della, Veronica, Richard, Dáire. The priest and the rest, wondering. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Staring down at the bluish gravel of the car park. Staring down. Thinking of blue. Heavy, being half-carried, fixing my eyes on the blue and yellow art-deco pattern of my velveteen top. Focusing on staying conscious and upright, on controlling. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, shit, shit. Finally at the car. Lying down in the back. Control. Stay conscious. Sit upright. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Take this to calm you down. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Around a round about. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Are we nearly there yet? Out. Another car park. Spewing foam onto Veronica’s funeral attire as she tried to help me out. If you want to, get sick in this umbrella, awkwardly open in front of me as I make it across the car park to A+E. Barely standing. Semi-conscious. Immediate attention brought to me. A flurry. A trolley. Helped up on to it awkwardly in my heavy, semi-selfness. She’s her god mother and a consultant. No she’s not, I was never baptised. Well, I can tell you what I saw.

Róisín Power Hackett is a Fine Art Graduate from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. She has an MA in Art in the Contemporary World, an art writing masters, from the same college. She has been published in Minus Nine Squared, Minus 9 Squared’s Anthology, Word Legs, Mama Grande Press, Skylight 47, Pamphlet Magazine (Netherlands), Glitter Stump, The Weary Blues and the Irish Abortion Rights Campaign newspaper, Rise and Repeal. Róísín has written for Hunt and Gather Creations, an on line Dublin culture magazine. She has also been published in all of the zines she has been editor of, those being The Kite and WORDS Zine. 

https://roisinphackett.wordpress.com/

Image Credit:  Lance Anderson