Wish

I wish I didn't have to tell you this. But it's either silence or truth. My beloved therapist was murdered just over two weeks ago by her son. It is just that incomprehensible. I have not had the heart to come here but I miss you all. My relationship with G was profound and loving, and was helping me finally to heal old wounds. I don't know what else to say. Times are dark, and every night I light a candle to G. The tree glows and the fire burns bright and we know that tomorrow brings a new year. And for now that is all.

Mum

Surrounded by my mother's possessions, rug, lamp, vases, dishes, CDs, throw on the sofa, pictures, photographs, and have even been wearing her cardigan, I am comforted and discomforted in equal measure. I keep saying to L
I want my Mum back

On The Road

We are heading south today to make what we hope will be our final contribution to the clearing of my mother's flat, for which a buyer has been found. We shall return with a car full of stuff. CDs and a CD deck, books, lamps, filing cabinet containing all my mother's paperwork, a mirror, a clothes airer, a bread crock, bowls, vases and ornaments, pictures, curtains, food items, and goodness knows what else besides. Pragmatic, sad, slightly anxious, here I am, and in a couple of hours we'll be on the road. Tomorrow we'll go into London to visit my Mum for the afternoon. She has been diagnosed with early Alzheimers dementia, and I guess we're all slowly absorbing this information (except her I suspect).

Last Night

Last night I saw you in my dream
wrenching the hands off the clocks
Vicki Feaver  White Tulips

There you were in the dark
in a kind of frenzy, barefoot
in the kitchen and it could have been
midnight or four am, it was hard to tell,
you had all the clocks off the walls
off the mantelpiece off the sideboard,
had smashed their glass like dinner plates,
now getting hold of the hands,
wrenching them, prising them, pulling them off.
Some came easily - the kitchen wall clock
its hands like plastic chopsticks now
littering the red lino in the moonlight,
but the little ticking carriage clock
would not yield its hands to you
so now you had seized up a pair
of blue handled pliers and were
gripping the tiny spidery things,
twisting and yanking them off
and there was no time now.

Even the computer with its
secret digital clock in the corner
had been smashed to the floor.
You were all fury and determination
awake or sleepwalking,
I couldn't be sure as I stood
at the window staring in
through the uncurtained glass, aghast.
What now? Time is gone
but the moonlight moves
across the kitchen floor
inexorably, marking the passing
of minutes as surely as clock hands,
so will you come outside
and try to wrench it out of the sky?
What of the sun which in a few hours
will be climbing the sky in tiny increments,
minutes, seconds?

Lions

Into my dream come the lions
and wait for me outside school,
the hefty male lies down calmly
like a Trafalgar Square statue
the lioness stands ready.

Ready for me. I approach
terrified. These two could eat me
for breakfast, lick my bones.
Should I run, stand still, lie down?

What's to do?
The lioness is in my house
though I can't see her.
I duck in anticipation
of her leap from the wardrobe.

Sam Lee

Sleepless

Bought a loaf called Sleepless White (it cooks overnight) then went upstairs to the cafe where Kate Rusby's album Sleepless was playing. Drank tea then went to therapy where I talked about my dream about lions. Though not much.

Last night was every bit as bad as the bad old nights. Maybe three hours' sleep, looking at it as optimistically as possible. Listening to the Sleepio imaging recording (in your mind you go to a relaxing place - healthy-looking grass, little birds, a path leading down to a beach, take off your shoes and walk in the sand, feel the breeze and the sun on your shoulders...), reading Little O, listening to Radio 3 very quietly at 3.30am. Up at 5.50.