Letter

The third stair up still squeaks and although I don’t mind it, I always remember Gordon saying that it would drive him wild to live with the noisiness of our floorboards. There is one in our bedroom that sounds like it’s saying my name. Not just any two syllable name but my name. I can tell you are laughing.

The evenings are too long now, they begin at four and by seven I am bored. I have been thinking about our carbon footprint and I have turned the boiler off. I light the fire in the front room at six o clock and stay up until it goes out. I am terrified of burning the house down. Do you remember, during the poetry reading when that mans hood set on fire?

The tomato and chilli plants have shriveled and hunched and I expect I am supposed to dig them up and offer them to the compost but I am too attached, or too lazy, or too nostalgic for the summer. The cat has taken to eating the spider plant.

Tamara from work has lost her baby and no one knows what to say to her. I made her a card with a pressed snapdragon on the front. I didn’t give it to her. I don’t know how.

I have never counted days before now, or owned a calendar. But, now one hangs in the hallway and I happily tick each day with a blue pencil. October is a photograph of a lighthouse in Dorset, the horizon bleeds the colour of fire.