it was months ago when i picked rosehips along my path home by the sea, slipping each one like a little gold nugget into the pockets of my grey, zip-up jumper. i’d imagined doing it so many, many times, like a child in a candy shop, reaching up to pluck the beauties down; this time, the temptation was too great, and i just gave in. ‘jumpers wash,’ i reasoned with my other, more fastidious self. ‘and it is never too late to achieve a dream.’

it was so easy, so natural, smiling ivories to no one but my self as i stashed treasure after treasure. i just couldn’t stop. i arrived home, pricked full of holes, thorny leaves poking carelessly out of my jumper (now folded carefully like a giant bag), hands full of whispery grass stems, lavender, and wildflowers, my heart breathless from breathing in so much all at once. ‘i must do that again,’ i told myself with the immovable, patient force of glaciers moving downhill. ‘i must empty myself of the care that keeps me from breathing.‘

i set them in a small, hand turned pot, enjoying how they looked while i found a suitable jar to be my wildflower vase and filled it with motive liquid crystal. i crushed a handful of those passionately red rosehips with mortar and pestle and poured them, ivory seeds peeking out of their thin skins, into a glass teapot, watching them soften in the steamy, boiling clarity, opening up to embrace my insides with a foreknowledge of their return to the earth. carelessly, i crushed a bit of cinnamon to fractious bark and added it to the pot.

‘i don’t know how to do this,’ i said to the darkness in me. ‘but i am joyous and fascinated all the same.’ (the darkness made a little nest in the corner and watched me grumpily, brows squinched together.)

that night i slept like a baby, and woke up clear, full of light.

c. Kate Gough, 13/11/19 23.25PM