Red carrots grow here. Here, a million lightyears from anyone else. Sea salt comes overland with the breeze. Golden grasses bob and motes of pollen rush by. Sat by the big window, I leaf through stories of old, sheltered from the cooling temperatures that spin against the glass. A whole planet to myself. Oceans to delve, deserts to cross, mountains to climb. I rotate the globe in my mind, running hands over its lumps and bumps, the warmth of its light side and the cold of its dark. So many unseen wonders, aching to be discovered. All in good time.
The space is for decompression. The weights of old are lifted from my shoulders, dispersed into the air, and scattered to the wind. I feel the fogs and murk clinging to the inside of my skull being drained away, like removing a cataract from the imagination. I dice red carrots in the kitchen, then swipe them into the bubbling pot. Sow and reap, the alien seasons tending a fallow mind back to fertility.
Paddy Dobson
21st February 2021