Awake, nothing to look at, just sea blood black, a paragraph before the nausea comes back, villages are birthday cakes, tiers of open ocean when we’re on our way to Ireland and we smoke cigarettes on the deck and it’s the best bit of the trip before we go back. She's the same, I swear she commands the thunder and rain, she’s ancient and holy, and for years I will see her this way.

Outcrops of rock in thickets of fog, the indignation of being ignored, the tragedy of being five years old, of being anything at all, still, awake, smoking and drinking white wine as another morning bleeds, attention seeking, icing sugar and blue with newborn greed, holding its breath until you swing your legs over the bed, wishing with ice cold reluctancy, anywhere but here, god, if you’re there, it’s been a while, but please, please.

She’s a tough crowd, her laugh is so polite she might as well bow, like she starts from the outside in, when i know that we’re so working class we wrap lights round the pots the dead palm plant lives in, turning up in the afternoon, daring us to say something, then it’s ‘pull the fuck over, these ungrateful little shits’, confused and letdown and then unsupportive, just like little kids.