when I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed I've been dying all my life

It was strange how words meant something when they came out of your mouth. Inside your head they were safe and silent, but once they were outside, people grabbed hold of them.

I shrug him off. 'Can't you just go away?" There's a moment. It has a sound in it, as if something very small got broken.

The inside of the door is glossy white. A total re-paint. I touch it with my fingers, but it stays the same. It's so bright it makes the room waver at the edges. Every few years we disappear.

It's as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.

All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead stars