9.

For Natalie.

She doesn't believe in flowers.

Beautiful but useless. White petals, crushed between her fingers.

8.

She ends up throwing her phone over the bridge.

It's poetic, non-conformist, and hurts less than waiting for a call that will never come.

7.

Classical. Jazz. Rock. Hip-hop. R&B. Pop. Oldies. Easy-listening. Talkshow. Laughter. Voices. White noise.

She switches off the radio and dances to the Silence.

6ii.

She's afraid of fading.

And erasers.

(Grey smudges, they disappear with time.)

6i.

She never writes in pencil.

They're tentative, hesitant and temporary.

5v.

Without wind, it probably wouldn't look as poetic anyway.

No broken words to flutter by.

5iv.

She contemplates throwing the ink-stained remnants out the window.

But there isn't so much a hint of a breeze.

(A wisp, an invisible caress.)

5iii.

"I-"

She tears the letter up.

The bastard would never read it anyway.

5ii.

"I am not-"

She tears it into shreds and uses a different pen.

5i.

"I am not a perfectionist."

She pauses, fullstopped, pentip on paper. She glances at her handwriting, cursived. Brushing words.

It looks strange to her.

She tears the letter up and starts on an empty sheet.

White. Wordless.

4.

She writes poetry on Cafe serviettes.

They tear beneath her pen, so she throws them away.

3.

Three am in the morning, she's been drinking red wine and champagne.

She raises her glass to a stranger, because she can never bear to celebrate herself.

2ii.

An umbrella. Gucci, black, silver, seventy-five dollars.

Crushed. Tattered beneath the tyres of a frantic street.

2i.

She stands on the sidewalk where the pavements meet.

Facing greywhite sky, she parts her lips to taste the rain.

1.

The world is unreal.

Or perhaps her dreams are too lucid.