Milkman

realised things had reached the point where I was now checking to see if the community was concealing itself in those tucked-away places too.

She meant depressions, for da had had them: big, massive, scudding, whopping, black-cloud, infectious, crow, raven, jackdaw, coffin-upon-coffin, catacomb-upon-catacomb, skeletons-upon-skulls-upon-bones crawling along the ground to the grave type of depressions.

This didn’t mean we weren’t aware, just that we didn’t know how not to be partisan.

provenance

Thanks to Jason, who was in love with Nigel, her own husband, so not at all interested in that way in real milkman, ma, on hearing of the shooting, was able to reach the hospital first.

‘Us’ and ‘them’ was second nature: convenient, familiar, insider, and these words were off-the-cuff, without the strain of having to remember and grapple with massaged phrases or diplomatically correct niceties.

Eventually the state responded by admitting that yes, it had precision-targeted a few accidental people in pursuance of intended people, that mistakes had been made, that that had been regrettable, but that the past should be put behind, that there was no point in dwelling.

In those days then, impossible it was not to be closed-up because closed-upness was everywhere:

At worst, the renouncers-of-the-state would take her away as the latest person acting suspiciously in our area, which would be, more or less, true.