I Died When I Was Nine

Content: Metaphorical post about rape and the aftermath.

I died when I was nine. I lay on a bed and I closed my eyes. And I wished for my mother. And died.

It didn’t hurt to die like it hurt to live.

It was a relief.

But something - I think his name was Death, took me by the hand. He whispered in my ear which surprised me as I had not known he was there until I died.

“It was not supposed to be this way,” he said.

Death looked sad as he carefully collected the shattered pieces from the floor and placed them in a bag labelled soul. He didn’t find them all. Some pieces were absorbed by the walls. Some were stolen. Others floated through the window and into the sky that was startlingly blue, considering it was a Death day. We watched them go.

I thought the pieces of soul were looking for the bird, and if answers to why lay in the song.

Death took me by the hand and we walked together in the darkness for a while. We didn’t speak because there was nothing to say. Until we reached a crossroads with signs that pointed in two directions to The Way Forward.

We stood side by side and I asked which path was mine and if Death would take me with him, but he gave me a shove and told me I must go on a different path. I looked behind me to the path I’d been on before I died, and I cried because I wanted to go back. But Death apologised and said there was nothing he could do.

Death walked away, clutching his bag of fractured souls. I cried to see them go because it didn’t feel fair to be incomplete.

“Give them back,” I shouted.

But Death looked sad again. He called over his shoulder.

“There is a lot of work to do,” he said.

I wasn’t sure if he meant him, or me. I was too afraid to ask.

The day I died was sometime in summer. Just before breakfast. The witness was a blackbird who shouted the whole sorry story from the tree outside the window, but the world wasn’t listening to sorry stories or blackbirds. So my new journey began, with missing parts, starting with breakfast at the table and a bowl of something that might have been porridge. In a world that carried on regardless.

I knew that Death was right. There was a lot of work to do. I was at the very beginning.