[Untitled Snippet From A Bigger Project]

I submitted this wee snippet to The Paper by GoodPress, Sunday’s Print Service & Lunchtime Gallery and I was really pleased that they printed it in December 2020.

I picked her up, I mean I grabbed her, and I plonked her on the floor outside my bedroom door, I mean I threw her down, and then I locked her out. The face, unsure what she’d done wrong and wondering what to do next, lives on the top of my right eye now. It’s been there for about 40 years. I removed her like a dirty a duvet. She didn’t deserve that. All she wanted to do was rub her head on the bed knob and maybe chew a little bit on the sharpest corner of the book cover.

She’d been walking in the woods. She was cradling great armfuls of daffodils. With sticky willy in her hair, mud on her knees and weed fluff all trapped in her cardigan, I felt such guilt for having declined the invitation to go for a walk with her.