People with Parkinson’s can’t sing but they can take a tumble. My grazed father for example decorated many pavements with his blood before he was grounded for good. I collected him more than once as he sat glassy-eyed with a girl-guide or a Goth by the halal butcher or the haberdashery. Excuses I made to console him – raised kerb, cracked camber – rather than allude to his ongoing disintegration. And it was only gravity after all, the kindest force, which reminds us what we share with our fathers, with the human race, with apples on the bough: we all fall down.
Paul Lenehan lives, works and writes in Dublin, Ireland. ‘Ring-A-Round The Rosie’ is a 100-word story from an unpublished collection entitled For Light That Will Never Reach Us: 100 stories of 100 words.
