Who travels alone

But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven;
for He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 

An old hut, hunkering down on its foundations, marks the end of the dirt road ahead. Between the trees, whose dark and slender trunks reach up to spiny branches, an open field lies under a naked white sky, so bright it hurts your eyes.

Like enormous stilted birds looking down, the electricity pylons in the middle of the field watch your arrival with indifference.  You envision them creaking slowly over the dry scrub when the light fades, tottering over the rolling meadows for nothing but a change of scene, unmoved by the insignificant horror played out below.

A crow sits by the side of the road, its feathers spiked and ticking against the cold. Behind it, a make-shift shelter of rusted white iron keeps the first drops of rain off a neatly arranged pile of logs.

The first roll of thunder shakes the still bright sky and the crow takes flight.

Dreaming alone

I thought I’d share another goodnight post – something beautiful to see you off into a peaceful sleep. I was peeping around Pinterest when I found this: almost the same house as the one in my own dreams, sitting right where I left it when I woke up: alone in the middle of a fierce, empty tundra.

Everyone who dreams dreams alone.

It’s such a beautiful image and, for me, it sums up dreams wonderfully:  the strange landscape and ribbons of colour, the clouds rolling over like heavy sleep, the untouched grey ice beyond. The thoughts we have while we sleep can be some of the most stunning creations, but no matter what we dream, we dream alone. There’s something amazing about that.

Sweet dreams, bloggers x

Letters – another extract from a longer piece

This is another extract from a longer piece I’m working on – the same piece that features The Pearl Mother. These letters are written by the protagonist’s mother.

“Looking up, it’s hard to believe that the stars really are so far away. The zeppelins pass overhead now and then, the drone of their engines a gentle hum compared to the loud clatters and shouts that ring out below.

My darling one, my growing child, how I wish you could be next to me now, breathing in the air, and the space, and the freedom – my secrets here in the city. No one ever thinks to look up, it seems, and even if they did, they wouldn’t see me here, lying flat against the roof tiles and feeling as though I could fall into the sky if I just learned to let go.

When the time comes, I will give you up as I know I must. To you, I will be an abstract concept; an idea, a mother you never knew. But to me, in this moment, under these stars, I am real. I want to cry out to you, wherever you may be when you read this, that I am real and that I am afraid for you.

I’m afraid that you’ll be like me, that right now, the strangeness that is part of me is being woven into your bones and skin, to become a part of you that you can never escape. What I’m more afraid of, though, is that you won’t be like me. That you will be just another person with their eyes on the cobbles rather than the heavens. That, my darling, would be a heavier burden to bear.

–

I lay on the roof again tonight, face turned up to a sky half eclipsed by swift moving clouds. After a while, the rain began to fall but I stayed where I was; the roof is the only place cool enough for me now, even in the early hours, and I cannot bear to look at plaster and velvet when the heavens are so close.

I know now that you are like me. For weeks, I have been dreaming of strange things – sounds, movements and feelings down there in the warm dark. My mind tries to match these dreams with things that it knows and understands – sometimes I find myself in the spice-soaked crimson dark of a coffee house, while other times, I am suspended and weightless in deep water that cannot drown me. I know that these dreams are from you but I don’t know if they are meant for me. I long to think that, somewhere in you, you know me, but perhaps I’m just privy to your thoughts in the way that a lover hears whispers from a sleeping partner.

As I write this, a storm is coming. The clouds have become so heavy and thick that I cannot see the stars – it is as though there is nothing beyond this city; the roof-top that I lie on. And while I know this is perfectly normal – for who can see the heavens above the clouds? – I am afraid.”

Red Flag

Slater sits next to me, his skinny legs with their perpetually bruised knees dangling over the edge of the pier. They sway slightly in the wind while the water surges below.

He slaps his hand against the rough wooden post next to him. The red flag whip-cracks in the wind, as vivid as a wound against the darkening sky.

“You’re not chicken are you, Ben?”

He slaps the post again and I wince, thinking of the splinters he’s risking.

The oily water seems to yawn beneath us, a dark space between waves opening up like a cave. I wonder for a moment whether I could time it just right and drop into it so that it would carry me away to safety. Or whether I’d fall all the way through and land somewhere far below our dangling feet. Somewhere cold and quiet.

As I turn, Slater’s face is stony white, bleached of colour by the cold and the heavy sky. His pale eyes have a dull glint, like a coin, and he’s looking straight at me. My skin prickles as he watches me and, as the flat of his hand collides with my back and I tip forward into the void, I wonder stupidly, for just a fraction of a second, whether I’ll leave splinters in him.

Homeward bound

A small house stands alone. A sea of ashen grass, rippled and silvered by the crackling wind, rages around it. Beaten but never broken.

Changing pressure and an indigo sky. Both signs of a storm, they weigh on its roof, and it hunkers down low.

The pillow cases snap and fight on the line, their brightness a void in the fractious dark of the afternoon.

Waiting, they stand and watch, bracing themselves against the door with pale hands as the wind drums and the dancing grasses bow, showing nothing but the horizon.

Tiger

I lie in bed on stormy nights and watch the leaves
Whip past the lights of amber streetlamps,
Casting glows on terraced houses, tarmac roads
It treacles in through gaps in blinds, this light,
And paints, with vivid lines,
A tiger pattern on my skin,
Revealing wildness caught within the tangled mess
Of flesh and limbs and covers and,
Where light is dim,
The secrets nestled close to me
But I lie still and wait to see if,
Out behind the frosted flare of icy glass,
The fractious air will calm itself and lose its edge
And whether light and wind will merge
And play at least at harmony
Or whether they’re just both in me.