she lives in a crystal ball of paradise.
at the windows flowers of any and every kind sell themselves to you
it's a rainforest in a china tea cup on a chipped saucer
it's a conservatory in north east England

for 10 years we've watched each other's lives
for a while I was small enough for it to be a jungle, somewhere I could get lost in
small enough to believe that tigers didn't live in the outside world
but then gradually it just became a constant.
something in my life that stayed the same
and kept the monsters in

entangled in the plants, ivy crept up the legs of a chair.
hugging it into the floor such that it too seemed to grow from roots
roots which after so long I stopped tripping over and became a part of.
next to the chair, fragmented through leaves, bits of a table sat
and within that, books, books , books

this well-read vegetation read me
as I walked past every day and stared
as I changed my routes and grew 2 feet taller
as I let others tread my path too, let them get my compost in their shoes
and I loved this paradise for not a single thing died or wilted in all of that time
and as I walked home carrying satchels of heavier problems I saw this chunk of rainforest and felt safe, somehow

it sits on the end of a long street 5 minutes away from my front door.
in it sits a woman who every day for 10 years waves at me but never speaks.
not to me or anyone it seems
she does not know me
I do not know her and yet she waves, and I wave
and it saves me.

and I wonder when it started and if she knows how important it is to me
or if I started it or she
or if her only purpose is to wave
or if she even likes flowers
or if she is real
or if we will ever speak.

I have no answers but one.
We will never speak.

a cold day, too cold for October, too damp for mild, milky, smokey October
I pass a lamp post not too far away and I see it's peak
The conservatory peak and I think ahead and I feel scared
for today I am not lost in my problems
I am broken by them and think of anything else
I think of the woman and of who she is and what she did and I resolve to wave first
and I do
and for the first time in 10 years there is no one to wave back.
but the flowers
and even they look wilted

I still wave to the marvellous woman who may or may not be there
I can't see her but then
i don't know I ever did
her paradise is still there though the flowers are pastels
and I wave
and still, in that glass paradise, nothing wilts or dies