Telomera

1.

The roo’s been at the rosemary again. Stomping his muddy claws through the garden like he’s trying to dig up the whole damn thing. I catch him at dawn, fur ragged and dust-streaked, ears twitching like he’s tuned to some sound only he can hear.

“Oi! Bugger off!” I wave a rake at him. He doesn’t bolt, just stares, head cocked like he’s sizing me up.

I chuck him a hunk of stale bread, more out of frustration than pity. He tears into it, jaws working like he’s been starved half to death.

He’s all bones and twitch - nothing elegant about him. Everything he does is too loud, too desperate, too feral. He’s got life tangled in him like barbed wire. It’s messy. It’s beautiful.

2.

My husband still visits every Tuesday. Same time. Same dead-eyed smile.

He parks the car so straight it’s unnatural. Never used to park that well. Always swore at the driveway like it had it in for him. Now he slides into the perfect line, crisp as a computer graphic.

He walks up the steps with that clean, unbroken gait they all have. Smooth and soundless, gliding on rails. His fingers used to twitch, drum against his thigh when he was anxious. Now his hands stay unnaturally still, arms locked into place like they’ve been sculpted that way.

He stops in front of me, and the heat of the day doesn’t seem to touch him. No trace of musk or sweat or that earthy tang his hair used to carry after work. Just the sterile scent of cold air and polished metal.

“Hello, Riz.” His voice is frictionless, polished down to some half-remembered sweetness. It’s his voice, but with all the texture sanded away.

“What do you want?” I ask, folding my arms tight like I can keep from splintering.

“I love you.” His eyes don’t track me right - too steady, fixed on some point just past my shoulder. Like he’s rehearsing the words instead of feeling them.

“If you love me, then touch me. Properly. Like you bloody mean it.”

He reaches out, fingertips grazing my shoulder with all the warmth of marble. His hands used to feel like calluses and pulse and heat. Now his touch is nothing. Air passing over skin.

Telomera, they call it. Miracle science, smoothing the frayed ends of your cells so they don’t break down. Keeps you beautiful. Keeps you alive.

But life isn’t smooth. Life is bruises and sweat, nerves and rage, joy bursting through cracks like weeds. It’s the muscle memory, the flinches, the habits carved into bone. It’s the way your body learns to speak when words are too clumsy to carry what you mean.

They scrape the telomeres clean, and all those pieces - the unconscious gestures, the reflexes, the quirks soaked into muscle and marrow - just fade away. Polished off like fingerprints.

He used to drum his fingers on the table when he was nervous. A mindless tick, something restless in his bones. I know he is anxious now, but he doesn’t do that anymore. Doesn’t scuff his heel on the porch like he used to when he was trying to find the right words. Doesn’t rub the back of his neck when he’s lying.

“What have they done to you?” I whisper.

“I love you,” he says again. The phrase hangs limp, mechanical as the forced, plastic smile he wears like a mask.

“Then act like it.” I shove him away, his chest so rigid it’s like pushing against plaster. “Stop just standing there like a bloody puppet.”

He blinks, eyelids slow and mechanical. His arms hang limp at his sides, every natural gesture scrubbed away.

I slam the door in his face.

3.

The roo’s back the next morning. Dragging himself up the steps like he’s got weights tied to his legs.

Blood crusted over one hind leg, fur clumped with mud. He collapses near the steps, chest heaving like he’s run from something worse than me.

“Bloody hell.” I kneel beside him, knees grinding like gravel. My fingers shake as I press a rag against the wound, arthritis biting sharp and mean. But I keep going. Because he’s breathing, raw and ragged. Because he hurts. And if I can’t patch him up, what’s the bloody point of anything?

I clean him the way I cleaned our daughter’s knee once. Five years old, chasing the neighbour’s dog through the wire fence. Tore her leg wide open, blood pouring down her shin like red paint.

“Mum, don’t let me die.” Her fingers locked onto my arm like a vice. “Don’t let me die.”

I tore up my own shirt to patch her up, hands shaking so bad I nearly dropped her. But she clung to me, nails digging in deep, her body making sense of fear in the way mine had made sense of love.

That rosemary bush over there - it was planted the day we brought her home from the hospital. Her father’s idea. Said it’d grow with her. Said we’d watch it sprawl and thicken until it filled the yard with scent. It’s tangled and thorny now, fighting for space among the weeds.

The roo doesn’t cling. Just keeps his eyes on the rosemary- what's the deal with this roo and that bush, anyway? He breaths his way through pain like it’s something natural, not some flaw to be erased.

He leaves blood trails and torn-up grass wherever he goes. Proof of his existence smeared across the dirt like an accusation.

4.

“Mum, you’re not safe out there.” My daughter’s voice crackles through the phone, too soft, too precise. The kind of voice crafted to comfort, polished to a shimmer so clean it feels sterile. “You could be... better. With us.”

“With you?” I bark, the words too bitter to swallow. “You don’t even visit. You just send your voice on a bloody wire like it’s supposed to replace you.”

“Mum, you’ve built unnecessary barriers. Our facilities can ensure your safety, your comfort. Your needs can be met more efficiently with us.” Her tone is placid, clinical. A cooing warmth soaked in antiseptic. The kind of affection meant to placate, not connect.

“Efficiently?” I laugh, but it comes out like a cough. “Life’s not meant to be efficient, love. It’s meant to be a bloody mess.”

Silence. I can almost hear her processing my words like data points, cataloging them under inefficiency.

“We love you, Mum.” She says it like she’s filing a report. The words ring out too perfectly, like some AI-assisted construction of empathy. “We just want you to be happy.”

“Happy?” I press my palm hard against the windowsill, splinters stabbing into my skin. “You don’t even sound like yourself anymore. You sound like a bloody recording. Like something made to order.”

“Mum, you’re being unreasonable.” It’s a reprimand wrapped in artificial sweetness. “The treatments are improving all the time. You could be restored. You don’t have to suffer.”

“Suffer?” I spit the word. “Pain’s part of the bloody package. You start stripping away all the scratches and bruises, you lose the whole thing. You lose you.”

“Mum...” The word drips with manufactured sympathy. “You’re making this so difficult.”

“Maybe pain’s the only thing left that feels real.” The words pour out hot, scalding. “I’d rather feel broken and alive than smooth and empty.”

A pause. A cold, exact silence.

“Love you, Mum.” But it sounds dead. Packaged and ready for consumption.

The line clicks off. The quiet that follows feels raw, frayed. Like a wound that refuses to heal.

5.

The roo’s wound is healing. I watch him drag himself across the yard, the limp getting less jagged every day. His fur grows back, wiry and rough, thick over the scar. He leaves bloodstains and droppings and destruction everywhere he goes. He’s a mess of hunger and spite and fight.

But he remembers how to drag himself through mud. He knows how to struggle. How to keep moving even when his body’s nothing but bruises and half-healed cuts.

He tears up the rosemary again. Stomps through the dirt like he’s claiming the whole place for himself.

I find him sprawled out under the bush one morning, chewing on leaves like they’ve got something he needs. He’s torn the roots up, clawed the earth until it’s just raw patches of dirt and broken stems.

I’m so bloody angry I nearly chase him off with the shovel. But instead, I sink down beside him, hands clenching and unclenching. Because he’s doing something. Breaking things, living through them, pulling the world into himself like it’s his own.

The bush was meant to grow with her. It’s older than she is now, twisted and spiny and so thick with leaves you can’t even see the roots anymore. It’s wild and untrained and full of life. And maybe that’s what bothers me most - how it kept growing while she became something smooth and silent and unreachable.

6.

My husband keeps coming back, his voice a record skipping on a single note. “I love you. I love you.” Like if he just says it enough times, it’ll grow roots.

But he’s standing too still again. Too poised. It’s like his body’s forgotten how to fidget. His arms hang at his sides like they’re on display instead of attached to a living, breathing man.

He pours me tea with the precision of a surgeon. No splash. No hesitation. The way he sets the cup down is so measured it feels wrong, like he’s playing a role and getting all the lines perfect but missing the whole bloody point.

I knock the cup over. Watch the liquid seep into the tablecloth, spreading in uneven stains.

His eyes track the mess but there’s no frustration there, no irritation. Just that same flat, polished patience. He reaches for a cloth with the slow certainty of someone performing a task cataloged by numbers rather than instinct.

“Why don’t you ever get angry anymore?” I spit the words like broken glass. “You used to slam doors, curse like a sailor when you stubbed your toe. You’d spill your food half the time just trying to eat too fast. Where’s all that gone, huh?”

He blinks, eyelids clicking shut and open like a camera shutter. “I love you, Riz.”

“Stop bloody saying that!” I shove him, hard. He doesn’t stumble. Doesn’t even sway. Just stands there, still and silent and waiting for me to give up.

I slam the door, as usual. But the ache in my chest doesn’t go away.

7.

The season is shifting. I am feeling my age. Terminally, maybe - who can say - well, they can, but I won't have it, because I am way too stubborn.

I write a letter to my daughter.

I scrawl it in thick, uneven lines. My hand cramps halfway through but I keep pushing. There’s mud under my fingernails, the paper smudged where the sweat from my palms has bled into the ink.

I don’t ask her to come back. I don’t beg her to visit.

I just tell her the truth. How pain is part of living. How all her precision and efficiency won’t keep her from becoming something hollow and untouchable.

How I need her to remember that life is wild and stubborn and full of scars. That the softness of a hand held in desperation matters more than a thousand perfect, empty words.

I bury the letter under the rosemary bush, where the roo sleeps now when he’s not tearing up my garden.

Maybe she’ll never read it. Maybe she’ll keep calling, her voice hollowed out until it’s nothing but static.

But the roo keeps coming back. I leave the gate open. Wounds healing, fur growing back over scarred skin. Stubborn... like me. He’s got claws and hunger and a heartbeat that’s never been smoothed down to silence.

And maybe, someday, she will understand why that matters.

THE END