It is still cold enough at night to curl my toes and drink hot cocoa and wonder, if I woke at midnight, the witching hour, if I might just be able to step through to the land of always-winter from the world of never-snows. Mathilde says I need to wear oakmoss in my hair (she is my looking-glass friend, and we are most intimate on all matters) and that I ought to bring sardines for the beavers.

The carriage clock on his desk chimed nine. “Your heart-aches, the dreams, memory loss, the peculiar sensation of moths in your lungs can all be attributed to this cause.”

I pinched my cheeks, rolling my tounge around the cavern of mouth. That couldn’t be right, I had been trying so hard not to exist. I had read all the right sort of books, while eating, walking, waiting for the train. I had changed my name at least three times in the last week. I had thought in the third person and past tense. I had even memorised The Jabberwocky until I could recite it backwards.

“A healthy girl of your age,” he continued, I wasn’t listening “ought to be no more real than a silk slip or a corn husk.”

My shoes felt too big all of a sudden. I was gripped by the fear that perhaps I had tried too hard. Tulle, ice, spectacles, fog.. I was forgetting something.

“Not to worry,” his bony hands scrawled something illegible on a yellow pad.

Windows, raindrops, crystal, plastic wrap.. oh, that was it. I had gone through to the other side, like cordial through a gauze sleeve. In unbecoming, I was nothing, and through nothing you can see everything. Everything, more bright and bold and painful than a gasp.

“Take three in the morning and two with your afternoon tea.” the doctor handed over the script.

I thanked him, turned, and walked through the wall.

I’m always inside when the wind howls. Wolf of the great world. I can not bear to have it whistle through my ears and around my fragile skull, it makes me sleepy and silences the sweet voices that keep me warm, dead poet’s words, balm for wounded hearts. The wind is loud, tries to drive me out, out through the chimneys and the gap under my door.

The more I stay inside the more it roars, but you see, it all overwhelms me, the fractured lights and the noises, especially BANG and worst of all the people. They feel too much, oh, how they rush about while their moods seep out like milky sap, forcing me to swim. Alice in the sea of tears, that is what it means to go out. My tissue paper soul, so quickly torn by the wanting and the weeping and the fierce, deep shame. They are all so frightened, clinging, cloying to the wind.

Oh, but this is not you, they will say. You are not afraid of wolves, where is your crown? We need you to smile for us, flash of white teeth, radiance. I can be tin solider brave, but I am not impervious, dear ones, and I soak it all up more than bread and butter pudding, more than you could ever know. For all I have are picture books to hold the wolf at bay.

This is my shadow, she has a name but I can’t tell it to you or you could steal her away and then I would have to wear iron shoes. I keep her in a drawer most of the time, with a brass lock, as polite people do, but sometimes she gets out, usually when I’m hurt or broken or lost and she thinks terrible things. She thinks dissapointment and doubt, she thinks fear and anger and she knows how to hate. They tell me we all have shadows. Some people wear theirs like a trench coat and that makes them scary. I fold mine up, when I leave the house, and tuck her in to my shoe. That way, I can pull her out when I need her. You can’t enjoy a good moonrise without your shadow.

Everything is born and dies, even stars. They’re just remembered a lot longer. I wonder if it’s the reason we call some people stars, because they’re more likely to be remembered. Maybe thats why the Gods put heroes up there too, and monsters and Queens, so we wouldn’t forget their stories. No one wants their story to be forgotton.

I like reading in the bath, its not a good idea really but its oh-so comfortable and otherwise I fall asleep and I’m slightly afraid of drowning. Picture books are best, you can only get through a few chapters of a novel before the water starts to get cold and your fingers and toes shrivel like prunes. My skin is so pink afterwards, with a rosey glow like a baby.