She crammed her head full of clutter,
A fragment of this,
A snippet of that,
Nuggets of unnecessary knowledge
To fill the expanse.

And books.
Notebooks,
Small, large, spiral-bound,
With lines or or, better still,
Plain.
Blank.
Ready for filling, and she filled them all.

It took a lifetime.

And once the spaces were finally full,
She was comforted by their strangely suffocating warmth,
And only sometimes allowed herself to wonder
What it would have been like
To have left some pages blank,
And have faced that vast expanse.

Copyright Vicki Watson 2013