A secret:

 Amelia Earhart is not dead, nor alive, she is suspended, laced in a web of time.

A moonlight conversation:

where are you?
nowhere, sewn into time's collar seam maybe. It looks like i am suspended over an ocean, the stars have fallen around me, Hercules's shield presses into my back, Pisces hold my feet, my head rests on Orion's back. My heart has sprouted wings it has flapped tirelessly like a hummingbird for 75 years 5 months 14 hours 17 minutes and 36 seconds. I am frozen. I am frozen in time, dried between the pages of your history books.





I am collecting star stories, could anyone tell me one? thetruffler@gmail.com, thank you xxx

half the contents of a forgotten pocket

Folded into a tear stained hanker chief and tucked into a forgotten pocket lies a graveyard. The pearly smog rolls over the gravestones like a sea of melancholy, half condensed tears and split milk. Dawn does not sing but sigh, her eyes are drooped and grey. Her breath shudders through the trees, sending their leaves pirouetting, their crunch like a siren's song to the misanthrope. Below the glass tipped grass lies an empty coffin. A bell chimes the song of heartbreak. the sea captain's body is down down down, lying in between the great whale's ribs as they  bend into a cathedral of sorts (but then again only Jonah would really know). A slow waltz still rings in the sea captain's corroding ears, it still quivers there, playing like a broken record over the voices of mermaids and whales (they slip like cold silk into his tomb).

The sea captain's dreams are haunted by a ship's worth of frozen shoes, left motionless on the black water's crystalline face, the icebergs have bitten the dance out of their molded soles. Now only the icebergs waltz in time with the music, mocking him, like sugar cubes that will not dissolve into his milky tea. They continue swirling as his eyes slowly rot.

The snow has covered the world with glitter and lace and quilts and snowflakes that look like shooting stars as they fall from the sky. I feel like I am in one giant blanket fort or exploring Narnia (I think I heard the trees whispering). It is all so magical: Snow ball fights in bed; spinning around like snowflakes; and rose buds blooming on cheeks and noses.

The snow kissed our bare feet as we danced, making them blush. 

Last night our eyes grew dizzy with delight, and as we spin we tumbled again and again into the white velvet quilts of snow (Our eyelashes became covered in a crystalline lace of snowflakes). Alexei came to dance with Anastasia, Tatiana, Maria and Olga too, their pink palms met ours and our hearts started pounding;flying round and round like snow doves. The world joined in too, pirouetting. Even when our feet stopped the world kept on dancing, (everything was far too lovely to stand still). But the Romanov children danced on and away into the cold Russian air (second star to the right, and straight on til' morning), the snow molded into little white rabbits and they skipped into the sky, they flew next to Anastasia's ankles. 

I am so very happy

There was a seemingly never ending library, the clit-a-clatter of my heals running through the passages woke the ghosts buried beneath the floor boards; a symphony of shushes condensed into coughed clouds of dust "we have heard nothing for a hundred and one years, now you have come and shattered our dried out ears". I murmured a heartfelt apology as they slipped my shoes from my feet. 

I dislocated 'The Language of birds" from its perch, as I opened it a curious chill escaped from within its leaves, inside there were two hidden rooms: one stacked to the ceiling with of precious rocks, glowing like stray moonbeams; in the other an unfriendly tea party was being held by two gentlemen who stared for too long, they sipped from translucent tea cups that moaned mournful sonnets. 

Figure I- a stray moon beam

I Wish Merricat was there with me, she would loved it. 'It must be very powerful' she would think, 'maybe I shall bury it or nail it to a tree.' I would not let her though, instead I would ask Constance to concoct us a sweet juice to make us into Lilliputians and the prettiest little cakes to tuck in our front pockets (to make us bigger again). 

We would climb through the window into the book, and nobody could stop us, not even those unfriendly men. We would rescue their poor little tea cups and go on to such adventures, bringing back the most valuable treasures: Miss Havisham's cold porcelain heart pickled in a jar; Dorian Gray's portrait hidden under Susan's old fur coat; Han's accordion, carried so so gently; Macbeth's dagger (which I will carry locked in a box); finally Anne Frank's pen, which Merricat would slip into her pocket before the officers could crush it with their boots. 

Words would run through our veins, we would breathe the spaces; eat the full stops; slip through the covers. We could become stories.

p.s. What would you take from story-land? 

Last night in Lost Hope, I found myself clinging to the tips of  a moss crowned mountain with frost bitten fingers, multicoloured circus lights were lacing their way, across the diaphanous twilight sky, into a  giant gossamer spider's web (they were jealous of the stars, you see). The air tasted of burning books and blood, the wind whispered death threats into my ear. 


p.s.  hello