The hours run away. They slip and slide like the tiny feet of the ducks and swans that glide over the frozen lake in her lunchtime dreams. Behind those eyes of hers, the world blooms, and there’s no such thing as heartache and no such thing as pain, and life is this one long car ride towards a yellow sun that never sets. As she twitches her nose, she’s drifting through the aisles of a supermarket she hasn’t set foot in for the best part of several years. Helping herself to cubes of raw jelly and ice cream, she scoffs the lot before trying on several dresses in the clothing department, and as she waltzes around eyeing herself up in the mirrors, she smiles at her reflection and then just like that she’s skipping through those golden fields of corn as free as a gust of wind and as light as the feather of a magpie. And as if on cue, here come the animals from their hidey places to follow her as she moves about like this place were made just for her. Scratching her chin as sunlight illuminates her sleeping face, the animals circle overhead as she flings herself up an embankment that will take her to the lighthouse she so often dreams about, only when she gets to the top, the lighthouse fades and she shines in its place, and as the animals watch her every move, so do those in the towns and cities below, and as she spins so pretty in her stolen dress, her laughter reaches the farthest stars in the sky, the ones that have been dead for years but of which still give their beauty to those who seek them out. For a second, she finds herself out of breath, and as she takes a moment to catch herself, she reaches out her arms, and as she leans back and falls, she flies through the sky like Peter Pan, an ageless child of her time. Yawning as she opens her eyes, she smiles and wipes away the tears as they roll down her cheeks, and for a while, just a sweet while, she sits there in her chair by the window not wishing for anything else.

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com