Blue slippers. I’d bought them specially, sought them out, in search of the style you liked. Not that popular kind, the kind you said made you look like an old man. Yours had grown threadbare, well-worn, and you’d already asked for new ones. Smiling, I wrapped the new pair, its boot-like shape a clear giveaway, in festive paper. When your belongings were returned from the hospital in a drawstring bag, those blue slippers barely worn, I stared at them and wondered why I didn’t just give them to you sooner. What if I had? What if, what if, what if.
Elle Symonds is a novelist and flash fiction writer from Bristol, UK. You can find her on Twitter @seventhelle.