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.

She has style. Of course I love Lavender too and we can’t forget Miss Honey (except if I was her I would have stayed in the pretty little cottage with the honeysuckle.)

I’m sorry I have been away so long. Work has been swallowing up my hours like a tigershark. I miss taking photos, but I am still writing. I’m writing a story about a boy, I hope I will finish this one.

It is four sleeps until my birthday.

I think the year should start in September, when the freesias open and bloom. The sun is grinning again but the nights still bite my toes. It is the season for birthdays.

(Of course it’s still July and I have to make do with african daisies.)

She loved too many things, that was her problem, and they didn’t always love her back. Some times they would run away, like the field mouse she kept in her pocket for two whole weeks. Others would slip softly in to the realms of forget-me-so, where ballet shoes and half empty diaries collected dust bunnies and sighs.

What they did not know is that she was seeking true love, the sort you only know when you find. She had to try everything, explore Wonderland until she found the silver slippers that would take her home. All the same, it hurt everytime she let one go.

I want to be a little paper doll and live in my paper house and wear paper clothes with the white tabs for fit. Everything would be neat and light and bright with the smiles drawn on and the beds always made. I would be a little worried about the rain though.

Maman is back. We picked her up yesterday with a big bunch of yellow daisies to apologise for the weather. This morning I saw an owl, she was up late, silently winging home like an errant ghost. I was in the burnt woods. A fire went through here a year ago and the green is only starting to come back. There are broken bits of wall and piping. Its a good place to play.