Chapter 1

In the way your wet hair sticks

to the side of your face like fat worms.

The space between parked cars.

Spilt milk spreading over a table top.

The rings on the inside of an onion when it’s chop-

-ped in half.

The laugh of an excited child.

The wild crash of waves on an empty beach.

A leach swelling with blood.

The thud of a fist slammed down on a table.

The dirty straw that lines a horse stable.

The taste of a nightmare in the morning.

The poorly disguised yawn of someone bored.

The sound of wood being sawed.

The horrible cold of a dead body.

The way a bag of biscuits bursts out

of an old man’s heavy hands.

The surface of a chocolate cookie

with its brown ravines and chunks of chocolate.

The green tiger-stripes on the oval orb

of a water melon.

A blackbird atop a telegraph pole

singing loudly.

The sun shredding over the sea,

shimmering on the green-blue surface.

Clouds streaming across the sky very fast,

almost too fast, like a nightmare.

Big, juicy caterpillars wriggling on the pavement.

Drizzling rain from a blanket of grey cloud.

The first butterfly of spring,

alone on the first of April.

The fresh, warm, clean smell of spring.

Rock doves cooing in the trees

to each other, to anyone who listens.

How in late April suddenly all the trees

seem to have leaves; the green fresh and sharp.

Snail on a leaning slate leaves a sticky ‘s’

as it makes its slow way down.