Perhaps if she could give these  worn words a little nudge in another direction then the tired old anchors about the past might fly again.But a sort of magnolia ink dripped steadily from her pen and nothing she read raised even half an eyebrow.

She craved turquoise.

In everything.

A wet smudge of green lime and dark chocolate across the

 back of my hand

 recalling my grandmother's wooden back stairs

down to her walled garden

 overlooked by a Quaker Meeting

House

with  three children  shy enough to listen

to my stories

and the  rain...

1940's York, the wintry river and a dark weedy bend stretches ahead; me face down, submerged, covered with his cloak.

I am Hunted by these rigid men in black, their drooling animals leashed tightly against  hard gloved wrists, as they patrol what has never been theirs, nor ever should be. 

Everyone over seven  was wearing an apron to differentiate themselves from the children, who flung their brightly wrapped presents into Esther's  'birthday grotto' then scurried off to the garden. Nina stood silently on the edge of the lawn watching Edward-the -matador lose his red glove to the rescue goat.

Wiping away the stains of Christmas dinner, a smell not unlike spiced up turpentine with wings, wafted before her, and she halted, breathing this reminder of  borrowed time, trying to shape the scent into something solid she could lean her head against,  when hope ran out on her again.

Tin wanted to love the woman with the whisper of liquorice about her neck but his in-box this morning had a new case of a  missing person and his mother kept calling from Israel demanding he find her case with that brown suede handle.

Can a white bear embrace a house so tightly that  sleepers spill out everywhere  into darkness? I never gazed upon the bear's face and maybe that was the point. The house had secret layers and when the huge shape  shadowed every wall, I curled away from its face.

I opened my eyes this morning to dark black ink hanging in the air in front of my face and I knew it was a signature and I had to read it out aloud before I got out of bed. And then I laughed, as this had happened  just the other week. What could I do?

Comply!

Your words sat on the supermarket notice board, red, blue, green and trolley pushers went past but looked up as they counted their soft loaves, minding feet, anticipating the rain as they broke out of this sharply lit place. Poetry for the people you were saying and I wondered if anyone needed such shapely words as they checked their plastic bags and calmed their children. Do we need new- old words for grey, for tired love, for empty? Then I looked around and everyone had stopped gazing into their bags and were nodding because they could.

Yes we do.

There were strange ripples on her skin, like soft scales. The sunlight danced on the diamond shapes and when the arm lifted, sharp colours fell onto the path and then across her face. She wanted to say 'pomegranates' and she did, just once. Time had relaxed his possessive  hold on this place and liberated, Alex held her thumb to her forefinger , took a long searching breath and began the journey she had missed all her life.