I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.

I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and dedicated in their quest to be mothers.

palimpsest

When did people become embarrassed to sing in public? Was it because of the decline in churchgoing? And yet the television schedule was full of singing contests in which people, however untalented, were far from shy about participating. Perhaps

Eyelids are really just flesh curtains. Your eyes are always ‘on’, always looking; when you close them, you’re watching the thin, veined skin of your inner eyelid rather than staring out at the world. It’s not a comforting thought.

She was, quite simply, a nice lady who’d raised a family and now lived quietly with her cats and grew vegetables. This was both nothing and everything.

It seemed there was an announcement every five minutes from the mythical conductor, imparting sagacious gems such as large items should be placed in the overhead luggage racks, or that passengers should report any unattended items to the train crew as soon as possible. I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing

Emily Dickinson’s beautiful poem is called Wild Nights – Wild Nights!, and combines two elements of which I am inordinately fond: punctuation, and the theme of finding, at long last, a soul mate.

here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar.