Is it not a paradox that her deception should leave her beauty so unmarked? Her winsome countenance - generously admired - leaves her suitors abject; mere puppets on a string.

Verily, the essence of her is as a tarnished trinket. For to mine own soul she appears as jaded as a ***** house quean. Her eyes which once shone with the light of truth unblemished, a colourless and infinite mire overgrown with the entangled falsehoods she has seeded.

You were singing in the shower,
Very loudly,
Off-pitch,
Soap in your eyes,
Face scrunched up,
Blowing water like a bull whale,
Curtains flung to one side,
And I thought - *******, I love opera!

Our initials chiselled,
With a crown cork bottle cap,
Into the trunk of our favourite tree,
Will the world wonder in time to come,
Whatever happened to you and me?

The light is dim, but I'm accustomed to working in the dark. Besides, it's safer this way. My eyes are not what they used to be, but it has become second nature to me - the pull of the needle, the tension in the thread.  

I stitched my first collar when I was six years' old, sitting on my grandmother's knee in the parlour of the old house at Innsbruck. ‘Isaac,’ she used to say, ‘you have your father's gift. Use it well.’

Ah, Papa, if you could see me now. Such expectations you had for my talent, but I assure you that the occasion for invisible seams and fine beadwork is over. Nowadays I work with a different fabric. A cloth perforated with ****** fire and riddled with shrapnel. The wounds - forgive me - resemble red Venetian silk embedded with black pearls; the bone like the baleen strictures of a dowager's corset. And the red dye runs. God help me, how it runs.

As I work, Papa, I imagine that you are standing in the shadows, your frayed sewing tape draped around your neck. I am praised for my quick hands and my ability to embroider life into abbreviated limbs. And I pray that you are not too disappointed in what I have become.

And my uncle says charmingly - as always:
‘It seems like only yesterday, mon petit chou.’

And - for the umpteenth time - my brother-in-law shakes my hand off:
‘Wow, congrats on the DOF position!’

And - like clockwork - my best friend puts a ******-happy arm around my shoulders:
‘To be perfectly honest, y’know like, you don’t look a day over thirteen, cross my heart.’

And I think to myself (******-offedly but politely, as you never know who’s telepathic around here):
’I could sit here fixed to this very patch of fading upholstery for the next 365 days with a flute of champers in my hand and still travel as far as you all believe I have, achieve as much as you unfailingly give me credit for, and look as fresh-faced as my oldest nephew...apparently.’

And then it occurs to me:
’Beneath the ill-contrived compliments and the misplaced confidence; despite their infallible ability to misconstrue my every word and complete disinterest in what and why I read out aloud for a living. They turned up. As they do every year. And we annoy each other. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. Santé!’

Her thoughts, gathered on the in-breath, are misplaced on the out-.

As her memories float free of their moorings, ninety summers fill the late-afternoon room with a kaleidoscope of people and places: a young girl in a home-made dress plays tag with her brother in a Provençal orchard; a dark-haired teenager waits at a station fiddling with the yellow star pinned to her cardigan; a Milanese tailor embroiders freshwater pearls onto a snow white wedding bodice; and - over by the window - a dashing young cavalry officer, with eyes which reflect my own, stands in the shade of a blue jacaranda.

‘J'ai oublié,’ she whispers as I nuzzle her cheek goodbye.

You may have forgotten, Bubbe, but I have not the stories you have told me.

Beyond the shanty town of Midtendrift, where the moneylenders ply their trade among the aimless and avaristic, lie the ice prairies of Ensomfelt. The region is a barren wasteland whose boundaries are flanked to the west by the bottomless crevasse of Issorg and to the east by Lake Hjertestorm.

Those who come to wander this no-man’s-land may find that they disappear from the earth for a time - from themselves, and from the memory of others. Relying only on intuition to guide them, they pass this way unseen, their weary feet making shallow graves in the freshly fallen snow.

The rocky outcrop at Engeldrøm marks the gateway to the in-countries. Nestled beneath the foothills of Mount Håp, this is the place to which souls lost to the world of ego and ambition return to take up their torch and remember.

During the long northern winter, the sky above Håp is an expanse of indigo ocean punctuated with an infinity of lamplights. Among these lanterns which float free of the earth, the North Star shines the brightest. It is here that you will find your journey’s end and a treasure trove of truth, forged in fire and sealed in ice.

Pages inked in memory of days which deserve no backward glance - no dwelling upon, no minutes added to their allocated twenty-four hours - except for the fact that I have breathed their air, lived their promise, and named them for myself.

The train I missed left me waiting on the platform in the rain, rush-hour commuters splashing past. Then you offered me your umbrella, half-an-hour of conversation, and a smile so warm it could melt chocolate. Now, somewhere between A and B, on an express bound for home, I realise I’ve missed you too.

Talking wounds leaves me forever at the mercy of my pain.

‘But I am precious.’ says Pain.
‘Only I truly understand you.’
‘What would you do without me?’

Know myself for who I am and not for the label you would have me wear.

She sheds her memories like the filaments of a dandelion clock. Fragile and irreplaceable, they slip and tumble beyond her grasp; displaced in one breath, one word, one conversation.

Searching for what might have been in the diary of her imagination, she finds only scattered pages and missed entries. She hopes that tomorrow will be a better day. But tomorrow was yesterday.

Hope to be...a hopeless romantic...hoping for the best...when all hope is lost.

Hope, I’ve always maintained, is like waiting with enthusiasm for something that is never going to happen. Such dedication!

And then I second-guessed myself.

Does it matter if what is hoped for eventuates or remains perpetually elusive? Is the practice of hope an event in itself; the lift in the shoulders, the spring in the step, the intangible high which gets us through? Maybe, that’s what hope is, no more or less than that. A survival mechanism of the highest order. An antidote to despair and disappointment which resuscitates the spirit, revitalises our connection to the world we live in, and inspires our momentum forward.

Hope is a self-generated experience which, with a select few thoughts or words, we can create for our own or for another’s benefit at any time and under any circumstances, irrespective of what is gained or lost in actuality. Granted, our individual perspective and personal biography directs our ability to conjure this sweet synaptic syntax, but with practice it can be ours for the taking.

Hope allies itself with truth and makes a friend of acceptance. It recognises what is possible and what is not. Hope has no expiry date but what we hope for does, and as such, hopes can be re-expressed, discarded, or adjusted in concert with our emotional evolution. Only with the advantage of hindsight can we declare a hope false or lost, and so often this declaration is made by an observer rather than the affected party.

Hope will always precede the outcome to which it is applied, a little like predicting the future, and therein lies the rub. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as false hope, only that which is falsely applied. It is up to us to discern the difference.

Sleep hides behind her gossamer veil,
Like a ****** bride on her wedding day;
The centre of attention, unfashionably late,
And blushing with a promise as yet undelivered.

Sleep stands at the altar of today’s sacrifice,
Knife poised to plunge at the heart of the matter,
Knife poised to plunge at the heart of the matter,
Knife poised...

How can I pour my existence onto the page,
To stand firm, true, inviolate;
Like this arrangement of ancient bark?

My words written in their time,
Shed themselves like autumn leaves,
Tumbled and turned by the winds of the creative mind.

Will they whisper to those who would hear,
Of greener times and memories unfurled,
My secrets, my shame, my joy, my sorrows?

To be picked up and appreciated for their sunset colouring,
Swept aside with impatience as a trifling incidental,
Or trampled to dust by the pell-mell of rushing feet.

And which, dear reader, are you - a collector, a sweeper, or a trampler?

It was a dark and stormy night, or at least it was for our single-parent family. The rest of the neighbourhood was enjoying the kind of clear skies which meant a hard frost overnight and a slippery ride to school in the morning.

The barometer in our neat, wee house at the end of our short, ordinary street was falling rapidly, as it often did these days. My father, an Iraq War veteran - ’Honourably discharged for dishonourable reasons, and don’t you forget it. ****** fascists!’ - was in charge of our weather. From blue skies with candy-cotton clouds in the morning to an eerie half-light of silent anticipation by late afternoon, we would end the day huddled around the kitchen table waiting for the maelstrom to hit.

We ate carefully trying not to scrape our plates with our knives and forks, and avoiding each other’s eyes. The cauliflower cheese was examined as closely as every other vegetable my aunt Kate - ‘I’ll not have my family eating slaughtered animals!’ - served up to us. You’d think the food on our plates was the most interesting thing in our precarious little world. Peas were my favourite because you could count them over and over...until they were finished.

Wind and rain lashed our evenings regularly. Sometimes we were treated to the automatic-rifle fire of hail, but worst of all were the sandstorms which ****** all the air out of our home and stymied any hope of sleep. On those occasions we all huddled together in my sister’s bed - ’No, Alex! It’s Livvy’s turn to hold the torch. You can look after the phone in case we need to ring Dr Matt to help Auntie Kate.’

We updated our worst-vegetarian-creation notebook and talked in close whispers about the weather. Mostly, we sat quietly and longed for blue skies and sunshine tomorrow, while the captain cowered in the cubby-hole beneath the stairs and screamed into my six-year-old brother’s plastic walkie-talkie. ‘Man down, man down, man down!’

I dream of you...on nights when the world has worn me out and boxed me in.

Snippets of reality snatched and shackled to tear-away shadows which claw at the fabric of my being. A monstrosity who closes my throat and strangles my peace; who herds my sleeping thoughts towards the abyss; who, with beastly intent, braids my tresses into a net from which I cannot escape.

And who are ‘you’ anyway - my nemesis, my reflection, or myself?

If you fear change then you must fear the dawning of spring after the dulling chill of winter; if you fear opportunity you must avoid the dappled shade of a linden avenue on a summer’s day or refuse a sip of cool spring water from the earth when you are parched; if you fear difference you must dread the stillness of the resting twilight after the uproar of the day. For in fear there is no certainty but fear itself.

[Enter Marco, a young Milanese courtier.]
It is he, is it not, whose honeyed barbs drip with sweet condescension, and whose kisses taint fair Bianca’s lips with similar speech? Behold, how he frames her vision to reflect his own and directs her preferences accordingly.

Fie, I have been April’s fool in believing Antonio my ally. His encouragement was as sweetmeats to a greedy child; but I have chipped a tooth on that candy-coated morsel and found its centre to be flavoured with deceit.

My cousin Bianca, whose name speaks directly to her nature, whose light once made shadows dance for joy; how extinguished she appears now. For as Antonio sparkles and splutters at her side, her brilliance flickers and fades.

Lo, how he has seeded his untruths within her honest heart. His lies smuggled like contraband, his blandishments the articles of his trade. God’s wounds! Such a purveyor of frippery and falsehood I have never met the equal of.

It is high time to confront this sneak thief in his lurking-hole and to uncloak his creeping connivance. I shall bottle my rival’s words and choose carefully the occasion for their uncorking; then pour for the crowd a rich liquor of ripe requital.

I wonder, when the apple fell from its tree did gravity reinvent itself?
Did the weight of scientific endeavour hang heavier on the branch?
Did the sun cease to affix the earth with his benevolent glare; the moon blush with shame for having - just once - wandered from her orbit, distracted by the stars? I think not.

Would Silvia have hesitated to tread through the unfrequented woods of Mantua, have declined to walk by silvered path to meet her Valentine? And what of Roxane? Could she have failed to be enchanted by the seductive stories spun beneath her night-time balcony, to be inspired by a shining artemisian crescent?

All of life can not be defined and quantified, expressed as an equation and mathematically declared a derivative of time, distance, and mass. We need no formula for beauty, heartbreak, commitment, and courage. For there are more things in heaven and earth, my dear Isaac, than are written in your philosophy. And - what’s more - you **** well know it!

Straddling our individual beams of light, we ride for the gap; and at the gathering-in of shadows, with a backward glance at once fleeting and forgiving, we leap beyond our earth-boundness in a bid to discover the source of our brilliance; accepting that if we fail we will never know more or less than that.

...for only good can come from eyes
             which behold the world with kindness;
                          and, so too, will grace follow where gratitude leads...

Rolling with the times,
I offer the past to the past,
And the future to the future,
So that I may remain present.

I wash my hands,
And wring them dry,
Watching my worries,
Disappear with the grey water,
Down the plughole of life.

I do opine that a constant life, although agreeable in its construction and longevity, may render its subject without two sympathetic words to rub together.

“Men have never failed to disappointment me, which is why I always wear petticoats of the softest vintage silk. Just to remind me of what hope feels like against the skin.”

O, feckless dart of immeasurable delight!
Wouldst thou direct elsewhere your flight,
And refute my rival’s gentleman claim,
That he be immune to Cupid’s aim.

His smug sobriety remains intact,
His pages blithe and matter-of-fact,
Where my poor pen is inked with woe,
And ****** to hell by quiver and bow.

O, mischievous boy do grant my request!
Whether modest maid or comely *****,
His downfall ensured by one bold kiss,
Shoot low, shoot high, but do not miss.

“I would rather be a pessimist who wears optimistic underwear - French knickers, please, in rose-pink satin;
Than a greyscale optimist wearing overboiled cotton."

My inkwell brims with verse unfit,
My speech tongue-tied; my page unwrit,
Yet though I be misunderstood,
Prefer I this to words of wood.