Book windows.

My favourite books were always the ones with windows. Windows through which to escape. I climbed out, or climbed down. Down a ladder, or maybe a string of bedsheets knotted together. Sometimes I sailed out. Sometimes I flew.

Some book windows opened onto gardens, at least two of which were secret ones. Into battles, into dormitories, into other worlds. Some led me into the past, or the future, anywhere but here and now.

Book windows didn't have jailers or monsters or snarling dogs or snapping crocodiles waiting for me outside. Or, if they did, I knew it was just part of the story, and I'd get past them eventually. I'd turn the page.

I didn't need pictures. I could have them, of course, some pictures are special. But they weren't absolutely necessary. I didn't need pictures or SFX or animation because the book windows always led to the most amazing place of all:  my mind.

Getting along with grief.

My grief and I go walking 

together everywhere.

It’s curled up like a foetus 

somewhere behind my breasts.

It’s not human. 

It’s not animal, or plant.

It just is. 

It’s a something I can’t describe, 

because I can’t see it. 

But I can feel it.

I feel it there almost always.

The moment I take my mind off 

mundane matters like being alive,

and staying alive,

there it is. 

Sometimes it sleeps 

but when it is awake 

it is a palpable ache I can do nothing about.

A name, a song, a conversation, a smell.

Gothic words from Books I once loved.

An I Love You whispered in the margin of a dead boy's letter.

Or just numbers added up on a scrap of notepaper,

in the quavering script of an old man’s hand.

A feather.

A regret.

A memory.

All these things waken it.

Some tears, some sighs, some pain,

And then I am ready to soothe it to sleep and try to ignore it again.

No difference.

The world was supposed to feel safer.
The air was supposed to smell clean.
But this death of a monster didn't change
a thing.

For this ending that came without justice
without confrontation
without resolution
I cried.
I cry.