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By AnonymJenny Downham
Adam strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears. We are blessed. Let them all go. The sound of a bird flying low across the garden. Then nothing. Nothing. A cloud passes. Nothing again. Light falls through the window, falls onto me, into me. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
a little bird moves a mountain of sand one grain at a time it picks up one grain every million years and when the mountain has been moved the bird puts it all back again and that's how long eternity is and that's a very long time to be dead
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By AnonymJenny Downham
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.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
And in bed, deep inside the building, are all the headaches that won't go away. The failed kidneys, the rashes, the ragged-edged moles, the lumps on the breast, the coughs that have turned nasty. In the Marie Curie Ward on the fourth floor are the kids with cancer. Their bodies secretly and slowly being consumed. And then there's the mortuary, where the dead lie in refrigerated drawers with name tags on their feet.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
As an actor I worked for seven years with a community theater company based in London. We used improvisation techniques to take stories to young people who wouldn't normally have access to them - in prisons, hospitals, young offender's units, youth clubs and housing estates.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
But all that is warm will go cold. My ears will fall off and my eyes will melt. My mouth will be clamped shut. My lips will turn to glue. ...No taste or smell or touch or sound.Nothing to look at. Total emptiness for ever.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Bye, Tess. haunt me if you like. I don't mind.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I'll return to dust, glitter,rain. If thats true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I'll be re-formed as apple blossom. I'll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family's shoes. They'll carry me in their pockets to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then?
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Dad, you played rounders with me, even though you hated it and wished I'd take up cricket. You learned how to keep a stamp collecion because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair like a mother should. You gave up work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let me have Adam. You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you never said, 'That's enough. Stop now.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Death straps me to the hospital bed, claws its way onto my chest and sits there.I didn't know it would hurt this much. I didn't know that everything good that's ever happened in my life would be emptied out by it.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Don't pretend to care. I don't need you as an anesthetic.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Do you want this to be a love story?
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Every breath, every heartbeat, was one less until maybe things stopped hurting this much.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Help me, Mikey, she wanted to say. I’m afraid. More afraid than you’d ever believe.’ And he’d take her hand and they’d fly across the rooftops and up into space and sit on some planet and watch a double sunrise or maybe a star being born or some other event that no human had ever seen, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. And she’d tell him everything.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Her face crashes. She hasn't dealt with a single transfusion or lumbar puncture. She wasn't allowed near me for the bone-marrow transplant, but she could have been there for any number of diagnoses, and wasn't. Even her promises to visit more often have faded away with Christmas. It's her turn to taste some reality.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Her skin tasted expensive.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Hold my hand. Don't let go.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
How late is it? How long have we been sitting here? I look at my watch – three thirty and the day is almost ending. It’s October. All those kids recently returned to classrooms with new bags and pencil cases will be looking forward to half term already. How quickly it goes. Halloween soon, then firework night. Christmas. Spring. Easter. Then there’s my birthday in May. I’ll be seventeen. How long can I stave it off? I don’t know. 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.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead stars
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I can see inside planes!' he yells. 'Come and look!' It's difficult climbing in a mini dress...I haul myself up even though my arms ache. I want to see inside planes too. I want to watch the wind and catch birds in my fist.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I didn't understand that when you make love, you actually do MAKE love. Stir things. Affect each other. The breath that escapes from me is dazzled. He breathes it in with a gasp.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I get lonely? I promise not to scare you.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
If I learnt anything at all about terminal illness in my research, it's that the experience is different for everyone. I do believe that life becomes concentrated when it's boundaried and that death is the biggest boundary of all.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
If you want a girl to like you, you have to listen like a woman and love like a man.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I imagine horses in the engine, their manes flying, their breaths steaming, their nostrils flaring as they gallop.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling - it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
"I like you," he said. He made it sound as if she was bound to disagree with him. She nodded. His face said he was telling her something very important. He said, "I mean it. Whatever happens, you have to believe that.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I love you. It hurts more than anything ever has, but I do. So don't you dare tell me I don't. Don't you ever say it again!
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I made a fatal error thinking he could save me.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I mean it. Whatever happens, you have to believe that.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I'm here. Soon I won't be. Zoey's baby is here. Its pulse tick-ticking. Soon it won't be. And when Zoey comes out of that room, having signed on the dotted line, she'll be different. She'll understand what I already know- that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between you teeth.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I'm here, Tess. I'm right here, holding your hand. Adam's here, too, he's sitting on the other side of the bed. And Cal. Mum's on her way, she'll be just a minute. We all love you, Tessa. We're all right here with you.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I'm me and you're you, and all of them out there are them. And we're all so different and equally unimportant.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Instructions for Adam Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keyes. Laugh. Eat pot-noodles for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
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.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Is this how it is for everyone?' she whispered. 'No.' 'How do you know?' 'I just do. I've never felt this with anyone before.' 'Serious?' 'Serious. That isn't a line.' 'Kiss me,' she said. He did. Everywhere.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
It hurts and hurts to have him this close. I feel sick with it.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.' 'Why are you saying that?' 'She might need permission to die, Cal.' 'I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
It's a shame i can't be there myself - i like parties. Text me if you think of any good hymns!
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By AnonymJenny Downham
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.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house. It's really, really true. A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I've always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don't.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I want you to be with me in the dark. To hold me. To keep loving me. To help me when I get scared. To come right to the edge and see what's there.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger. Whenever I wanted, I could get him out and he'd look at me the way boys do in films, as if I'm beautiful.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end.
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Maybe I’ll come back as somebody else. I’ll be the wild-haired girl Adam meets in his first week at university. ‘Hi, are you on the horticultural course as well?
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By AnonymJenny Downham
Maybe you should say goodbye, Cal.' 'No.' 'It might be important.' 'It might make her die.
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