an imagined life: 2

But it’s not coming. It’s on the paper pinned to the drawing board; she can even from here feel the stone rough under her hands, rough, becoming oh so slowly smoother. Serpentine this time: local, green, beautiful with its host of prehistoric calcium laid down from animate beings. Softer than Portland; almost easy – and with her eyes shut it’s there – her hands know it.
  But the petrified mass is stubbornly clinging to its current identity.
  She scribbles, on the paper this time, what are we before we come into form?
  Throws the pencil down. Gets up.
  Through fog, Godrevy blinks.
  In the lane, the wrong side of the door in the wall (door, not gate, hermetically sealed), her black dog – the visible panting tongue-lolling one. The dog’s raison d’être is about bursting through that which is closed – the longing to be where she’s not, and where she’s not supposed to be.
  They turn, dog following woman out towards Porthmeor and the cliffs beyond.