On this day

Somewhere in the world, a child was born; a father cried; a toddler took its first steps; a yapping dog bit the hand that had fed it; somebody made a chess move too quickly; teenagers experienced a kiss for the first time; a suicide bomber sweated uncontrollably as he waited for a bus; a mother shed a tear over a picture of her son in army uniform; a brother struck a younger sibling because “they deserved it”; a car slammed happily into a tree; a school bus ingested a gaggle of uniformed midgets; a couple made love – in a cupboard, amongst the brooms, where the boss wouldn’t see them; a man lied to his wife “I love you”; a wife lied back to her husband “I love you too”; an artist spilt red paint over her shoes; a woman vomited into a toilet bowel; she held her stomach protectively; a small, thin wire strangled the life out of a human being; a knife sliced through a potato; a million TV sets beamed the latest news to a million empty rooms; market stall holders shouted out their prices; buyers haggled; a pilot miss judged a landing; a surfer’s legs dangled over their board; a baby sucked on a teat; an explosion ripped through a bus stop; the sun rushed across the earth; we blindly chased it …

… and my mother died.