WHEN SHE WALKED

BACK IN YOUR SHED

SHRINK

UNSEEING

EYE OF THE WEATHER

SHADOWS ON THE CARPET

HAVE WE BEEN HERE BEFORE?

CROSSHAIRS

STANDSTILL

CRAGFAST

ASH-SHE - on the felling of the Beloved Ash

They came without fanfare
As Autumn gathered her gold
In keys and coppery carillons
Of trees untold.

You stood, Beloved Ash,
Fraxinus fair,
Facing unfazed their saw teeth
Till no tree was there.

When stillness swallowed blade-hum
In your shadowy wake,
The sawdust sprinkled silence
For your soundless sake.

This space still throws your shape
Above your severed root.
The elder that you sheltered
Conjures sap and shoot

In memory of your majesty,
Spring sprays unborn.
Birds circle your absence,
Wings on paths well worn.

Your stump now melts its heart
In toadstool and in moss,
Minting from Winter's promise
Wisdom, truth and loss.

[Tribute to the much-beloved Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) at the end of my garden, felled earlier this month at the request of another who lived in its sacred shadow but saw only leaf litter and blocked sky. Felt its going so deeply, it's taken me this long to say what I wanted to say in tribute to such a beautiful old friend. I could never do it full justice. RIP the Beloved Ash.]

RACE TO THE RAINBOW BRIDGE (Flash Fiction)

No idea how I made it here. Without my shoes! Last thing I remember is the vet's voice:

"I'm sorry. We did all we could."

Here's his lead. In my pocket. I fly that dog like a kite. He weaves in and out the bollards and lampposts like French knitting.

I know it's here somewhere in the wood. Our wood. Mine and my lad's. Between the Horse Chestnut and the beck. Between the dell and the darkness. The Rainbow Bridge.

I'm scuffing leaf litter from my paws. Everything's gathering on my soles as I run. Seeds, dead things, lichen, carapaces. Did I say paws?

If I can make it there before he comes, bounding, baying, I will throw myself in his path, block him and baffle him from crossing. He'll mop my tears with his loppy tongue. He knows me better than my shadow. Better the shadow than the space.

I'm limping, now. Thorns and nettles. It must be here. Has to be! What if he's there already? Now I'm sliding down scarps, colliding with hazel and bramble. Ricochet echo off the wind turbines. Scent of oilseed chasing us across the folded fields. That copse where the cuckoo surprised us.

My feet, finding themselves in my shoes again. The carpet with the corporate logo under me. Worming powders and pet insurance.
"He was lucky to find his forever home with you."
I was the lucky one.

Staggering, now, not haring down all our dreams. Our old walk feels wrong. Tilted, somehow.  Leads were never meant to be so slack. Collars so empty.

How can I ever go home without him?

SWEETS FOR MY SWEET (Short story/fiction/romance)

 “Max! Where have you got to this time?”

Harry could only just hear himself above the crash and rumble of the waves below and the breeze buffeting and flattening the grass on the cliff top. It was chillier than last time he had been here, but at least the rain the weatherman had forecast had stayed away. Max was nowhere to be seen, as usual.

The trouble was, thought Harry, Max always followed his nose. He seemed to remember every winding path through the thrift and samphire above the little seaside town where he had holidayed every summer of his life with Harry and Maureen. Now he was eager to revisit them all again, haring back every so often to sniff the air and lick Harry’s hand apologetically before lolloping back to pick up all the private messages other doggy friends had left for him over the two years he’d been away.

When Max was a puppy, Maureen used to bring tasty liver treats in the pockets of her mauve fleece jacket to tempt him back from the exciting adventures he was enjoying down in the gulleys and caves along the shoreline. He could always find something more interesting to do than come running back to his master’s voice.

“Harry, you old duffer, Max knows you don’t mean it!” Maureen would say. “I bought you that ultrasonic whistle but you always forget to pack it! Lucky I remembered his favourite snacks. His tummy always wins in the end!”

Maureen was right. Max would always come bounding back up even the steepest path when treats were on offer, panting and smiling to get his reward. For that moment, he forgot about the special smelly seaweed and whatever the gulls had left on the rocks. Sometimes he brought some of that back on his nose or his paws but Maureen always had a packet of those wet wipers to clean him up again.

“We can’t go back to the guest house with all that flotsam and jetsam on us, can we, Max?” she’d say.

Harry chuckled as he remembered how she had used the wipes to tackle a huge blob of rum and raisin ice cream on the back of his own jacket. He’d blamed that on the gulls, too, until Maureen poked him and said:

“Harry! It’s not the gulls. You’ve only gone and sat on your cornet!”

They’d had a fit of the giggles, then, just like they’d always done together since they were teenagers. They shared the same sense of humour. That’s what made Harry notice Maureen at the dance all those years ago; her sparkly eyes and the way she got his jokes and made even funnier ones of her own that made him howl with laughter.

Harry blinked, disappointed with himself.

“Silly soft old sausage,” Maureen would have said. It was no good keep dwelling on those last precious few months over that awful winter and getting upset.

“You need a holiday, dad. It’s no good moping about again in the house all summer. Anyway, you and Max will have lots of lovely walks on the promenade and then there’s the crazy golf and the café that looks out onto the seafront. I’ll phone Mrs Archer for you, if you like.”

Kathy was right, just as grown up daughters seem to have an annoying knack of being. She was a lot like her Mum, too, practical and sensible where Harry often seemed in a muddle and a dream.

“I’ll do it myself, love. Max needs the exercise, the great hairy lump, now he’s an old dog.” But when Harry booked himself into the pet-friendly guest house where he and Maureen had always stayed, he was determined not to avoid their familiar well-loved walks. Where was the fun staying on the flat bits? That was for old codgers! Even when the doctor told him he had diabetes just after he retired, Harry was determined everything would be just the same. His own dad had “had sugar” as they used to say back then, and Dad had carried on regardless till the day he died.

“Mr. Collinson,” his new young consultant had said more recently, “now your pancreas isn’t working quite as it should, it’s important you get some gentle exercise to help the insulin to do its work; just remember always to carry something sugary with you in case your blood glucose drops too low.”

Harry had been hopeless at timing the injections at first, when they told him tablets were no longer enough to control his diabetes. Sometimes he would go a bit wobbly and sweaty and Maureen was always the first to notice.

“Do you need a sugar tablet, Harry? I think you do; you’re getting a bit argumentative and wibbly wobbly, you know.”

Sure enough, Maureen would fish out the packet of special glucose tablets from her pocket or her posh handbag if they were at a dinner dance or a café, and Harry would soon feel better and raring to go again.

“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t nailed on with glue,” she joked. “Lucky I remembered to bring the spare packet with me.”

Harry heard Max’s barking coming up from the path that descended steeply to the shingle strand where the limestone caverns dotted the coast like a doggy paradise. At least he hadn’t fallen in a rock pool, but what if he was stuck on a ledge? Harry imagined the big yellow rescue helicopter whirring overhead and the photos in the local rag showing a soppy old Golden Retriever with a silly smile on its face getting winched to safety with the locals and holidaymakers whooping and applauding.

Harry had always tried to keep himself as fit as he could. A few years ago he could have shimmied down there and been the hero himself.

“You’re always my hero, you old softy,” he could hear Maureen saying.

Harry felt in his pocket. His fingers closed on the neat embossed tin with ‘Best Dad in the World’ on the lid. Kathy had bought it for him as a holiday present to keep three whole packets of glucose in. It felt very light. Then he remembered putting the packets on the bedside table ready to pack into the tin in the morning. They must still be sitting there, along with the wet wipes he was going to put in his pockets for the usual little mishaps Maureen always dealt with so sensibly.

“Max! Come on up! Time to go for walkies back to the cottage!”

Shouting made Harry realise his voice was going a bit funny as though his cheek muscles and his tongue were made of rubber and when he looked where the gulls were wheeling over the sea, they were mixed up with little swirling spots and squiggles like bits of burning paper blowing up from a bonfire. He was starting to feel quite weak and shaky and although the wind was cool and bracing on the cliff, he was getting so sticky hot he felt he wanted to peel off his jacket and sit down on the ground.

As though he was a million miles away, he could still hear Max barking above the sound of the waves that seemed muffled, somehow, as though his ears were full of singing cotton wool.

The familiar woofing started getting nearer and nearer.

“Good boy, Max. I’ll be up in a minute, I’m just having a little lie down,” Harry heard his own voice saying, as if he was a stranger with detachable lips. He couldn’t remember actually laying down, but his body had taken over somehow, trying to conserve his energy for fight or flight. He had never ever let his blood sugar get so low before, or rather Maureen hadn’t. She always saw the signs long before anybody else even noticed, including Harry himself, and brought out the sugary lifesavers.

Then something warm and wet was tickling his hand where it lay palm down on the prickly grass that felt like little spiky tufts of that artificial stuff greengrocers used on their stalls. His brain was whizzing round trying to make sense but he felt so weak he could only think of giggly silly things as if he was drunk. He hadn’t been drunk more than once in his life when he was just a tiny bit tipsy at a neighbour’s wedding as a very young man. After he met Maureen he never bothered with more than a glass of shandy, so how did he know this felt like being drunk? He remembered then the glossy leaflet the nurse at the Diabetes Centre had shown him describing the symptoms of a ‘hypo’ attack when your blood glucose is too low.

“Be careful as people can sometimes mistake a hypo for being drunk,” the leaflet had spelled out in large underlined capitals.

What if somebody found him like this and called for the police? The tickling got even more slobbery on the back of his hand and he could hear a woman’s voice, now, close by, though his eyes wouldn’t seem to open to let him say hello.

“Are you alright there?” The owner of the voice was kneeling by Harry’s head. “Well, obviously not. Are you diabetic, by any chance?”

Harry managed to nod, but he wasn’t sure which way was up and down, so his head ended up flopping around in a way he hadn’t quite planned, but he did manage to tell the lady his name.

“Alright now, Harry, you’d better have some of these jelly sweets,” the lady attached to the voice was saying, very gently but matter-of-fact. “First we’d better see if you can sit up and swallow properly or I’ll have to call for an ambulance to get you off to A&E. Thank goodness I have this terribly sweet tooth and I carry a big bag of jellies with me whenever I go for a walk. I’ve just been exploring those caves. I felt rather like a smuggler! My grandson calls me Dora the Explorer. Cheeky monkey.”

The voice went on saying soothing, funny things that kept Harry chuckling and concentrating. She helped him sit up and as soon as she was sure he could manage them without choking, she fed Harry some of her jellies. At first his mouth was so numb he couldn’t taste anything but soon the different fruit flavours came through. Gradually, he began to feel much better and they sat at the side of the footpath, with Max trying to sit between them, begging for a sweet of his own by putting his paw on Dora’s wrist.

“Quite an intelligent dog, aren’t you, Mr Max?” said Dora as the three of them made their way back along the cliff top path.

“If he was clever he wouldn’t keep going AWOL and leaving his lord and master stranded miles from nowhere,” joked Harry, “but he’s sharp enough to know which side his bread’s buttered when he wants something.”

They both laughed as Max nuzzled his nose into Dora’s pocket.

“He knows which side pocket the sweets are in, you mean,” she chortled. Harry found himself rather taken by Dora’s laugh.

“How did you know I was a diabetic?” Harry was suddenly curious. Dora smiled.

“I’m a retired nurse. Endocrinology was my specialism so I’ve worked in a lot of diabetic clinics in my time. I used to come to the little fishing village in the next cove every year with my husband Stan. When he passed away I decided I just couldn’t face the same old same old. I started coming here when I needed a break. I love walking the cliff and exploring the caves. Usually I have the place to myself but today Max kept running up and barking at me. I realised he must have somebody waiting with a lead somewhere so in the end, when he wouldn’t be shooed away, I thought I’d better climb back up here in case he got lost or stranded when the tide came in. Dog’s know, you know.”

“Max knows when he’s onto a good thing, that’s for certain,” Harry smiled as Max managed to tweak a jelly out of Dora’s pocket when she wasn’t looking.

“I mean some dogs know when their owner’s in trouble; sort of a sixth doggy sense. You can train some dogs to alert people when they start going hypo, or get help if they are prone to seizures.”

Harry grinned and patted Max’s head.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, eh, Maxy?”

But he wasn’t so sure about that any more.

A few summers later, after endless emails and long phone calls and meetings in country pubs with Max in tow, Harry and Dora were walking on the cliffs again. They stood for a moment, close to each other, in the special place where Harry had had his little lie down, as they always called it, just listening to the seabirds squealing and crying as they rode the air currents over the ocean.

A dog was barking somewhere on the beach. They could hear its owner calling it and whistling for all he was worth. Dora squeezed Harry’s hand tenderly the way she did when words weren’t quite enough. They thought of Max, always running on ahead, nose quivering towards hidden horizons, but always coming back when Dora rattled the liver treats that she kept in her pocket next to Harry’s special sweets.

For my long-vanished twin: song of a wombtwin survivor

Vanished twin, I still miss you.

I love you.

You are always with me and always have been.

You always will be, treasured twin of my heart.

Wombtwin survivor, born an only child.

I dreamed you and felt you deep in my gut in unspoken places. I asked about you. I traced you with my feelings and fears, my missing piece. 

Together we were “fearfully and wonderfully made” in mum's womb. Conceived together in love. Awaited with expectation, trepidation, excitement.

“I have to tell you, you might be expecting twins!”

That first appointment, when the midwives palpated mum's stomach to find out about us, they caught the whisper of both of us, in the fragile fluid that cradled us in our amniotic sacs.

No ultrasound in 1961. No man on the moon. No TV in our house. The steam trains thundering by at the bottom of the garden. But you know that. You were there, where you were meant to be. A heartbeat away with your heart that never saw the light of that October morning when I broke through, head first, large domed skull, tearing mum's tenderness, away from you.

I'm so sorry you couldn't come with me. But thank you that I carried you out with me, unseen as mist, like a deep taste of the ocean beyond and the constellations above us, pricking out radiance through the autumn sky. That you let me live.

I smelled you in the bonfires and heard you in the crunch of the autumn leaves, I know I did. Even though words would not reach you. I tasted you in the exciting glow of those early birthday candles that lit the front room in our cottage when the world was dark by five o'clock. The sweetness of icing and the creaking polished stability of the old sideboard.

Those mirrors, the space between the bubbles in the bath water, always gave me a rush of terror. Reflecting lightbulbs. Kicking away stability like the sky was rushing in and I was marooned on another planet. In my panic I closed my eyes. Was I afraid not to see you there, mirroring me? Half a century later I still tilt the mirrors down where they can't mock me that you're still not here.

From the earliest days I was always fantasising being other people. Usually characters that caught my imagination. I had a whole invisible galaxy of animals who were my invisible friends. To understand people I became them. I always have. Acting out in my mind the actions and reactions of others. Whole families of children named every breathtaking beautiful name I knew, and some I didn't.

Telling stories as I waved grasses quietly in my hands where nobody could watch me, down our garden, behind dad's garage. Singing songs that never ended. I was caught in the world where you should have been to play the other part. I needed nobody else, though they seemed to require my presence. I was happy alone. Because you were filling the lack like a swan's bent neck staring back from the glassy pond at it's happy image.

Once in my teens, on a bus, I heard a baby cry. Somewhere deep inside, in the quivering place in my stomach, I heard a baby's cry, on and on, that refused to be comforted. Sadness that went so deep it was a tear that couldn't mend itself. I know that was you. Part of me, but wholly other. My mirror and soulmate from the first day I breathed in life's potential.

“Are you in pig?”

That hurt my mum. Some drunken bloke mouthing off near the Horse and Groom, in drink and seeing her pregnant. Were you already absorbed into the warm silence, by then? I feel so protective to you and mum. That was ok for me, but not for you two. I wonder if you heard that?

We would have been inseparable. Sampling Granddad's cabbages down his allotment. Making him think of his mum and his younger brothers, each of them with their twindom that had shaped his own consciousness, running across the summer fields and over the stiles towards Hoyland at the end of Victoria's reign.

You weren't in the physical world to share dad's bike with him, the man things, the boy simplicities, direct and compelling and blunt. So inside I was both daughter and son, girl and boy. I never wanted to coddle dolls or dress up like a queen. I loved the wild outdoors and knowing and naming every plant, creature and corner of the landscape. The places we would have explored together, I investigated and claimed for both of us.

I saw the pegs and the line and put more and more pegs in. Extra and over till the line was heavy and full with wood, like so many birds on a wire. Some for me and some for you. Because I didn't have you to play with. Yet in my soul I did, somehow.

We were conceived in January. Maybe somewhere in the middle of the month when the nights were freezing. Those old sash windows, they used to get ice on the inside and when snow came it drifted half way up the yard wall on the entry side and huge icicles hung from the back of our outhouses where the outside toilet pipes dripped. By Easter, I guess you were gone to all intents and purposes. But not to me.

When I was little, I dreamed about a little dog who would be my shadow, to be with me like you should have been with me. I met him when I was thirty six and he was perfect. My little man. The dog I saw in my dreams all those years ago. Just as you are real to me, as if you had been born fifty years ago, holding my heel or me grasping your fingertips, sibling and sister.

I always craved a soulmate. But in reality nobody can carry that and not be your twin. They would always fall short or be smothered, or misunderstand that need for wordless symbiotic merging. You are my other half and you have never left me, not for a moment. I cannot need somebody else like I needed you, so I am still that singleton. Whole apart, yet wholly partial, filling in my own silent blanks, making my own peace out of the chaos of our brokenness.

Some words say things for us. We understand them with our spirit.

I hear the words of this song that Leona Lewis sings and it says so much of how I miss you, it always makes me cry from that deep wound you left when you lost the fight to be fully formed. I'm so sorry I flourished because you stepped back into the still sea of before. But I know I can and must survive this, strengthened eternally now by our twinship, by the love and healing tenderness of our Maker, for which I will be thankful every day of the remainder of my life.

“RUN” -words by Snow Patrol, sung by Leona Lewis around 2009 when my beloved pet dog died, bringing up all these age old feelings. Here I am, singing this my way, for my vanished twin as I move on without him.

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

http://www.wombtwin.com/