izzy

there is a child’s bike nestled in the fallen leaves and rainwater runoff of a second-storey roof, and all I can think is that for it to have gotten there, somebody must have had to throw it.

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sarah

I dreamed of you again, and you were beautiful, as ever, and profound.
The last time, I was dying, and you came to claim me. Stood in a storm of light and wind to guide me away, and seeing you filled me with such love and anguish I almost burst. Halfway between you who I had lost and the ones I would leave, I held you and thought ‘This must be what dying feels like – all the sadness and all the joy in one moment.’ You folded me up and I woke sobbing, sobbing, while a man held me and kissed my head and told me it was okay.
Last night, it was summer. A beautiful warm day, and you were there almost casually, with a man you’d once loved, the light in your hair. ‘I saw you!’ I said, ‘in a dream.’ But that didn’t feel right, and you smiled, and said ‘Next to a dream’, and I knew that was a better way to say it. You held out your hand. You were holding a tiny tomato, which grew as I watched. I could see the insides, embryonic and swirling, like watching a galaxy grow in slow motion. The universe inside a cherry tomato. I was enchanted, and we stood and smiled and breathed in the day and the sweet bitter tomato smell and it was good and simple and easy.
Still I see you on street corners and crowded train platforms. Even when I haven’t thought of you in ages, realising with a guilty pang that today’s the day I thought I’d never forget, and I did. You’ve not been on my mind so much as under it. Trying on faces to see if they fit.

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