OUR LITTLE RAFT.

In a sea of dinghy's and oil tankers and sleek motorboats,
Your love is like a raft.
Some people float past clutching on to tree beaches
Some lie at the bottom of the sea.

Our little raft works tirelessly to keep me afloat
Even if sometimes water leaks in through little holes
And our toes do get wet.

Occasionally, someone in a shiny sailing boat
Or purring motor vessel
Has called to me and invited me aboard.
Jump ship !
We have caviar.
But I wouldn't leave you and I and out dear little raft.

You brought me the foundations
The sturdy driftwood and rusty nails
The soiled rags and the old broomstick we use as a mast
And I showed you how to patch it together.
We sanded and oiled and scrubbed and hammered and patched
Then stood back to admire our dear little raft
And rode the windy seas.

I once mistakenly hammered a nail into your thumb
When trying to show you how to piece things back together.
Salt and blood mixed in the wind
As I tore off a strip of the ragged sail to compensate for my mistakes.

You once tripped and keeled overboard
In the midst of a storm.
I was barely there
Grasping at sea foam and trilling your name
Violently sick at the thought of the raft and I at sea without you.

But you emerged coughing and splattering from the waves
I hoisted you aboard, where you sat dripping and shaking.
We still don't mention that day.

And then the time that we so bitterly argued
Against the biting winds.
You threatened to dismantle all that you had brought and built
And take your seaworn driftwood with you.

We floated in silence for a few hours
Side by side
Before you splashed some water my way.
Let's not fight
Is all it took to get us back aboard.

Then there was the one day that I saw an island.
I thought of leaving our dear little raft
And swimming off to a quieter paradise
But something of your familiar silhouette against the moonlight
And the lapping of the sea against the worn timber frame
Made me stay.

MEETING IN THE SPACE BETWEEN DREAMS.

There once was a girl who used to close her eyes and tell herself stories every night as she slept.

Or as she tried to.

She would imagine dungeons and dragons and, or the light-footed sandals of Achilles whisking her high up into the air.

She would imagine breathing fire, bending water, having the clouds whisper into her ears.

Sometimes, when sleep did finally surrender itself to her wanting embrace, she would wake and want only to capture those dreams-before-dreams in words.

But by then, they were almost always forgotten.

But then she met a boy who was different to her.

Where she read books and studied words and marvelled at the multiplicity of meaning

(she overthought a lot)

He was practical and logical, applied this to his ambition and thought through a lense of numbers and strategies.

But such is often the beauty of encountering a mind so different to your own.

They often sat quietly, trying patiently to guess what the other was thinking.  

And then he told her own one night, before she had time for any confessions of her own,

That he too made up stories in his head every night as he waited for sleep.

“I usually give myself superpowers”, he said,

and she smiled.