vii

Oh Louise, I just had to come running and tell you - I was zapping the coffee and there in the briny, the whiteness frothed. I thought I was dreaming whales out there again - I often do, it is so easy when the whitecaps are dashing about to imagine whales into them. No it is not imagining them actually, it is not knowing the difference and wishing whales into things. But I know you are a wishing-whales-into-things kind of girl and you will understand my not-nonsense.

I looked through the binoculars and oh, more splashing and gunmetal fins and backwards belly flops. Do your eyelashes get in the way with binoculars too? I'm still not quite sure whether it was a large large dolphin or an itty whale but my friend! In a instant you were here and I was showing you and waving hello and pointing - all the insides of excitement.

Kisses Louise today.

Sea Mist,
Paeony

X

vi

Dear Ellie,

Yesterday, buying a sandwich, the cashier called me 'Darling' and instead of inciting anger it felt like someone had seen me, momentarily, and offered a tender gesture in a lonely sea.

Moonbeams,
P
x

v

Dear Louise,

There is a girl at school with a gorgeous sprawling derriere. But I find it a very insolent bottom. It twitches from hip to hip and jiggles with a rhythm all its own. When it walks away from me, the sight of it bobbing along, singing its naughty song, makes me itch to teach it some manners. The fact that the girl it is attached to underlines vast sections of library books, in class, only serves to make me more irascible.

Fondly,
Paeony
x

iv

Dear Ellie,

When I take a banana to school and it comes time to eat it, I find myself quite selfconscious. The acute awareness of being selfconscious causes devolvement. Something about the banana makes me treat it tenderly, with a careful hand; it must be peeled and eaten a certain way, in a certain order. The fact that there is nowhere to eat a banana unobserved is most unhelpful.

You are in many of my thoughts.
Much love,
Paeony
X

iii

Dear Louise,

As the rosy ball of the sun was breaching the far sea horizon, it lit the architecture of the sleeping frangipani. It illumined the skeleton onto the white curved wall, transposing an organic dream on the starkness.

'I am here' it said.

I was most grateful.

Always,
P.

ii

Dear Bloss,

I note that there is moment of perfection when drinking Jasmine tea. A goldilocks moment when the water is not too hot and not too cool, when the Buddhas Tears and temperature ally.

It is not a moment to pounce upon or court, and I wend my way to the moment maybe one in five cups.

Each time I find it, it's yours.

Missing you dearly,

P

i

Dear Louise,

I discovered today that when one lives alone, one should be careful not to choke.

I hope this finds you well.

All my love,

Paeony