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.

It’s fire outside, and I’m bottled up in a glass jar, all windows. A little greenhouse. So I close the curtains and lie down on the cool, calm floor. Books flap about me on paper wings, insects in fine print, dizzying. Restless, I pace the room and my toes stick to the wood boards. The burnt light leaking through the blinds makes me melt like chocolate.

I am sitting in shadows and eating chocolate biscuits because it is too bright outside. The sun singes the leaves and makes the pavement hot to run on. Patch and I watch L’Ecole and I tie ribbons in my hair. My christmas tree has white leaves with gossamer film. It doesn’t snow here, it never snows, but I can pretend.

p.s. I made a little film for you, because I couldn’t just photograph it. The music box is from Claire.

I walk past the Gingerbread House every day on the way home from school. I have to go the long way around, take Watercress Road instead of Hayne Street with all the other girls. I like that though, walking on my own, and besides I can’t help it, I am in love.

The Gingerbread House is one hundred years old, or so Papa tells me. I wonder if the willow tree has been there since it was built, or even before. I love it’s lonely windows with veils of grey curtain and it’s big red chimney that the turtledoves roost in. Most of all I love it’s gate, curled iron and overgrown with creepers that burst tiny violet flowers. I want to swing on that gate.

Maybe it’s strange to be in love with a house, to walk shyly past it each day and lie in bed at night dreaming and wondering what it looks like inside. Maybe it’s silly to wish wish wish that it were my own, that little front room would be mine and I would fill it with pictures and books and flowers-in-teacups. In summer I would lie on the grass and watch the bees feast on the honeysuckle and chamomile garden or climb the willow tree and tie ribbons to it’s branches.

It’s empty though, My Gingerbread House, it has been for ever and always which means as long as I can remember. I think it must be lonely, missing it’s families and dreaming of the children, ghosts in the hallways. I know it is sleeping and waiting, waiting, for someone to love it and awaken it with just the right kiss.