don't look at the sun

Much has lost its mystery. The day I spiralled down the back stairs of Webster and lurched against a bathroom wall, giggling - so this is what it feels like to be drunk! The day I realised I was the one in the romance, not just watching it on a screen. The impossible becomes possible - moving overseas, learning a language. Less lustrous things have lost their mystery, too - how banks create money, and what happens behind the scenes of newspapers.

But I'm still not sure about the sun. If you look straight at it, you'll go blind, they always said. I watched it, low in the sky, because no one was there to tell me I shouldn't, just like there's no one to tell me not to eat ice cream for breakfast anymore.

The colours changed as I stared, threatening to become a colour I'd never seen. You're pushing it, the sun said. You'd better blink - a game of chicken.

I stopped running for a moment as it slipped behind the skyline and underneath the sea, waiting for the green flash, but I must have blinked at the wrong moment.