Everything tastes of violets today, of memories and the too long shadows that fall when one approaches silence. I’ve been walking backwards, hopscotch, over the cracks in the pavement (which open, welcoming me, it is cooler underground) running out of ink, as always, and waiting for the mail which does not come, like the rain.

It has been two hundred and forty eight days and three hours, february is the kind month, a little less to count.

Days spinning by like pinwheels and each one leaves an afterimage, sunburnt, on my eyelids whose thin veils do little to bring the night closer, or shut the world out. Drawing monograms on the back of paper napkins, your letters all tangled up with mine, only I have too many names and the S’s swallow you up with the evening waves. Home to paperback mountains, a fortress by my bedside, so it’s just me and the mouse whispers and the girl in the mirror with the charcoal eyes which say I’ll miss you all the more when you’re here.

December 25th. Cut holes in old books, like the one in my heart where the snow should be and the holly berries and the robins coming down to eat from my hands, starved by the winter as I am starved of it. Something sacrilegious about cutting up books, my hands were shaking, and all the elfdust in the world won’t make it real for me. Afraid I will never remember the poem on my lips as I woke at six am, all those years. Afraid all the pretty boxes won’t grant my wish, which would fit in an envelope really, with a 60p stamp. Afraid paper snowflakes on the windowpane are as close as I shall ever get (don’t let it be so, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.)

I am reading too much in a vain effort to make the words come back. Reading of burning girls and betrayal, and boys who watch through window panes as everybody dies. The March’s History for a dash of comfort, milk in tea, although it grows a little safe for me to be truthful. I’ve long wished to be a Jo, up all night with inky fingers, but I’m afraid I shall always be Amy, full of little vanities, pining after French satin ribbon and a perfect nose.

November means early mornings and trying to draw out just three more words to line up a thousand, and none of them worth the paper they’re written on. Cups of tea gone black and cold, and writing on trains until there is a steady avalanche of dialogue slipping off the page. All of this, solely to prove to myself that I am not so small and weak willed, after all.