Pimms and an Eclipse

I am five, nearly six, sitting on the coal bunker. This is my place. My throne. My piece of the world.

Mum has given me a piece of glass blackened by a candle flame. Hold it up, she said. Don't look without it.

I hold it up.

The sun is wrong. Someone has taken a bite out of it. The sky turns the wrong colour. Not dark. Something worse; scary, frightening. Will it always be like this? Has the sun died?

Four thousand years South: Stonehenge. People are watching. I am five, on a coal bunker, a piece of smoked glass in my hand, fear in my heart.

I don't have the word eclipse. I have the feelings.

The decking faces west. We have been here before.

Total Eclipse of the Heart on the radio driving down. Bonnie Tyler. Dead a month. Portugal. We don't say anything. We let it play.

A piece of glass blackened by a candle flame. A cold jug. Nowhere better to be.

Seventy-five years on. They took bluestones from these hills. The same sky. The same thing. I have learnt how to measure.

The moon takes a bite.

We try not to count what's left.

The light shifting. Something in the garden going quiet. The birds first, then us. We don't move as fast as we did. We have stopped pretending otherwise.

Halfway into shadow. The Pimm's going down. We find each other's hand. The grip still good. We measure things like this now.

The world is sepia like an old memory. The cold coming in off the sea earlier than it should. My back. Her knee. The small indignities accumulating like the morning pills.

Still a sliver hangs on. Breathe. Keep on, keeping on.

This is the last one we'll see. We don't say it. We have learned not to say it.

Our sun comes back. It always has. So far.

The sky catches fire. Streak after streak after streak. Celestial fireworks. Joyful. Keeping nothing back. We have stayed out longer than we should.