Swallows. The pause year, when this was building site, they spat mud bricks under timber eaves and peacefully shat down unfinished walls. I moved in when they went to Africa – a cuckoo. In spring bird brains programmed to return. And return. Thwarted by slippery cladding: returned unnested, they found another perfect niche. A niche […]
Healing – 100 words
Healing. Sometimes when dramas and other people’s lost possession distract from tending the broken parts, things change. You, check, fleeting to find that new skin is fresh and pinkly smooth. Fine, that’s that, you say. And go about infatuations and reactions, habits clunking into place – a solid construction. Moving forward. But under the carapace […]
Summer clothes – 100 words
Summer clothes. Dawn, high blue and clear. Warm through double glazing. A day to get the boxes down from the top shelf. Hello linen, shirts with no sleeves. Sandal cages for naked toes. Dresses I didn’t wear last year, or the one before. Shorts. Espadrilles. Capris. Flip-flops. Even the names glisten in the sun. The […]
100 words on swimming
Swimming – This weekend, I became one of those women who posts photos of themselves wading into icy water wearing a bobble hat. In the dark, under the fattest, glow-in-the-dark biscuit of a moon, you couldn’t see the goose flesh as the slick cold inched upwards. And upwards. Unbearable, exquisite, until, suddenly… Oh, I can […]
Vanishing act
Love, they say. Whether it’s the sneaky, while-you-were-looking-elsewhere kind Or a thunderbolt that smacks you And leaves you reeling like walking into a door in the dark, It arrives – a huge and solid thing Immovable and permanent Stone I love you, they say And it’s a fact, like gravity Or the wetness of rain […]