Kate Walters responds to Mike Stubbs’ brief “All you can do is glean information from the tiniest fragments. Trying to see everything makes you ill.”

The dust in my nostrils, the dead rat in the gutter, the cornetto for my morning food, the hot morning, the fear I feel, the hot crowd at the station, the jarring of the watery scene, the buses and the clanking; the bright rush of orange, blocks of colour like paintings on fruit stalls, I buy strawberries and wash them, sit beside a canal to eat, all in a rush; swifts swoop; hot tears from eyes brought here to bless; consciousness now of how clearly I remember the beginning, the first footsteps, the dusty responses to morning, but not the later times and days. I see the froth of a wedding dress, and I remember sitting on the cold floor watching the screens on Graham Fagan’s installation, and the milky glass of the chandelier like frozen canal water hung high; and the feeling of warmth and relief at finding the group, or, rather, having them find me; and the red dress in Helen Sear’s film with the numbered trees, and the rape, the arrows, the yellow (always yellow). On waking my chest had been tight and I had known something was wrong.

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Kate Walters on Twitter: @Katehorse