Suitcase

My mind has been curiously blank this past week, a fat white expanse of plane-smoothed chalk mattely pin-pricking thoughtful pupils and coating curious palms with calc dust. Which might be calming, perhaps, if not for the unsettling half-heard sound of a thought or two, not one of those little caltrop-shaped ones that might drop out of the subsidence cracks if you shake your skull just so, but staggering, towering, silent ones like walking a corridor of ice and realising that for hours you have been staring at a mammoth, ear-splitting in its frozen forever.

Tomorrow I am on a plane for a week in England, breaking out the brand-new visa, to celebrate Pluvialis' birthday. We are going to see Hamlet. I will breathe English autumn, and drink terrible English coffee, banking around dodgem emotional corners with glee.

I'll send a postcard.