42 Days
By Stella Duffy
Forty two days:
The time it took to go from liking her to loving her
to travel from Southampton to Wellington on the Shaw Saville Southern Cross in 1968
to write the first six chapters of my first book seventeen years ago
to begin to understand grief (every time) and that they weren’t coming back (any of them)
to be a good catholic girl and stop sinning and then start again
to go through two lots of chemo
to make one failed IVF attempt
to grow jalapeno plants from seed
to understand A Level calculus
to write, rehearse, and perform my first solo show
to watch the garden change from summer to autumn
to let a Christmas pudding mature (minimum time)
for the hyacinth to bloom.
Long enough to make an enormous difference or none at all
too long for detention without charge
too long for us to stand by and say nothing.