If the Ides of March is the unluckiest day of the year, to be bewared of, then the 14th must be the most lucky. Cliffs are what you dream of when you are not asleep. Gorse and hot clover under your fingernails; everything you want to hold on to is just darkness. Imagine if it had been a few hours later; imagine if I had not needed to catch the last train home. All this coherance would ring untrue, and the number 15 would flash in my head, Caesar's head on a platter, an unfoundling in the nest outside my room.

A sunset fills a big grey cloud-- you're imagining a big cloud, but you have no idea how big. Paused-nuclear-explosion-before-everything-flattens big. Slowing down on your bicycle on a path hung with late freesias, you put your hand over the sun and block it out. Now the steam rises from the sea. Humanistic crook! The sea is no more real than a knife carving turkey that slips and knocks against bone, silencing the long table of guests. I like travelling with someone who knows the landscape, the long straight roads, so I don't have to worry about directions. His downturned smile smelts my head.

An hour ago I was winding open the small high window in our room and he asked me if I was planning an escape. A seraphim is an angel with stunned wings. Sheep stand on end, birds rattle in the wind on the pier. I say "an hour ago" but now it was many hours ago. The square photographs were familiar to me. I have seen them in my own family albums, not sepia-toned or faded but deliberately yellow, but these inhabitants were all strange. Even my finger on the thin paper could not feel the score of skin, the hushed poses, the children who are now much older than we will ever be. Newspaper cuttings, service records, medals won and lost, cholera, pastel-face beckoning to the pastel-background of the portrait of the woman on the wall who is also in the next room, murmuring.

Mews are the stables and outbuildings of the castle. How do you know this? My hand clutches for the red bicycle light, but there is none. You will have to ride behind me. It is not far now, where we are going. The dying sun has concealed itself behind weatherboard cottages, under the severe white line dividing the road in two-- the sun is a monk tonight. I like how you turn to see if I am laughing. I like how silently you listen, head bent, frowning. The head under two pillows, sleeping, refuses the early light, the blue swotting still-light sectioned by fly-wire, and beats with dreams.

My sister believes in ghosts since the white nightgowns in the wardrobe of my grandmother's spare room fell during a heavy wind, their doors gaping and weak. I have felt a ghost in me, administering a witchy drug. Like teeth under pillows exchanged for coins, it happens to everyone. Coppery aunt, fingers razed in the black sea-- my senses shone with pain.

-- Where are you, right now?