The Lost Princess

The Art of Forgetting

Skylark — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:47:31 +0000

And when she found something completely unbearable, she simply forgot it. That was her greatest power, forgetting. For nothing in the world can trouble you once it no longer exists, and what is the past but a selection of memories? Carefully edited and imbued with the light of forgotten summers. She had nearly drowned once, when she was six, or at least so people told her. She couldn’t remember it, however hard she tried. Only when her toes curled over the edge of the swimming pool did a faintness come over her, the afterglow of a forgotten fear.
It worked for people too. She had discovered this long ago, the delicate art of dismissal. The cutting out of a figure from one’s life, with neat precision and the edges sewn up so they would hardly be missed. She dreamt of them sometimes, and the shadows they had left behind, but you wouldn’t know it. She was awfully good at making things disappear.

Fading

Skylark — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 06:35:16 +0000

Model & Processing: thelostprincess
Photography: sabatomic.com

The Book

Skylark — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:15:23 +0000

She considered the book, it’s dust jacket slightly ripped and cracked like the skin of some ancient beast. She considered it as one considers the distance between two rocks and whether they can leap over the rapids that swirl about the ankles or whether it is too far, and the threat of being pulled away and under too great. She had read it before, twice in a dozen years, and each time it had carved out of the emptiness some new need in her. It had made a bonfire of her world, and forced her to leap the dying ashes. Yet for all of that, she loved it. She loved it as the mayfly loves the setting sun, and like that brave creature she knew that the end is even more beautiful than the beginning, the last pages truer than the first. She ran a finger down it’s spine, the caress of a lover, lingering for a moment on the very edge, and like all lovers she parted with a whisper;
“Not just yet. Soon, but not yet.”

violets

Skylark — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:18:47 +0000

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.

a thread

Skylark — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:23:14 +0000

I am a thread too slender, To suspend all this reality.

Phillip Pulfrey

pinwheels

Skylark — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 03:39:17 +0000

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.

kisses

Skylark — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:15:41 +0000

kisses xxx

snowflakes

Skylark — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 09:19:49 +0000

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.)

tie a knot

Skylark — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 06:49:11 +0000

I am so terribly guilty of living in memories, much simpler than daydreams because there is no waiting for them to come true
(and it gets harder each year to be sure that they will.)

Skylark — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:26:14 +0000

She said that dying was not like falling asleep, it was more like waking up for the first time, and being so awake that it hurts.

I never write down my dreams, I’m afraid it will encourage them.