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Dear Sack Posset,

Below the library red date stamp saying 13 JUN 1985, someone has written in neat cursive above the author bio of Richard Brautigan - ‘Nail cutting scissors.’ They have written this in lead pencil with a full stop and a lush curl on the tail of the g. This is the only addition they, or anyone, have made to In Watermelon Sugar.

I feel something about this, about the exactitude of the three words, about their irrelevance and oddness, about the object described, about what it meant – was it a shopping list for one of one – I don’t know what it is I feel; I start to crest a vague crossness but then I think, the narrator, unnamed, may appreciate the precision in this one, and I remain uncrested, short of miffed.

Sea greetings,
Paeony
X

viii

Dear Louise-across-the-world,

It has been a whale day again. The sea has been holding itself hard blue and reckless, tight against the sky. A cold bear blue and polar caps. I woke from dreams of searching stark rooms and lay looking out and over. As gulls were blown about and pelicans imponderably did their thing. Drifting and wondering if they were hypnopompic humps once more but lo, those extraordinary tails exist in crisp seconds that do my head in. That I am here in a life, in a world where one wakes to whales out one's window. Propped on an elbow I play the game - where next? Whitecap or whale? And Huxley pushes his head through the arm triangle - always worthier.

Even in the kitchen, along that front - more whales and tails until disconcertingly I want them to be done, to go - the risk seems too great to be showing off such capacities for joy and life in plain sight.

Lemur nights and moss dreams dearheart.

Love,
Paeony
X

Reach

He reaches through fear to me. And while I wish I could banish the fear forever, no matter how I look under I never find the terror mice - I would kill them for him, let him watch and be sure - for me, he reaches through that fear every time and all I can do is marvel and reach back,