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Anna Chandler de Waal

nothing - but this

the world falters -a graceless stutter- and dissolves. unviolent, quite subtle. a soft unpicking of thread- the slip of fabric through thought. words unstring themselves. un-grasp-able, a delicate

refusal. in this undoing death ceases. spirit reigns. flesh pools on the mattress, dense and red and useless. don’t look - the sun guttered out

two weeks ago - the light is a ghastly white substitute.

meaning flees and leaves in its wake a quiet anarchy

and in my dreams I stand at the edge of the sea. the water is cool. the sky is impossibly vast. a heron stands, stock still, watching for fish amid rock. and meaning, still, is absent (but here I am glad of it). I watch the clouds come and go and think of nothing- nothing- but this.

oh, one day I will open my eyes-

and for a moment cannot quite make out the divide between

the real and the dream and the red and the water and the sky-

but somewhere, far away, the sun will blink without fanfare into the world and life will begin,

Artwork by JJ Gray

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