Santa Ana Winds

I love how you rise with the larks yet still fear the dark I love how you believe in ghosts politely if not properly and listen to clairvoyants who telling you what you already know while physics shakes its head I love how your stubborn coffee rituals never change Cold milk on granules, still floating in quiet rebellion on hot water in spite of your hysterical stirring I love how you repeat stuff apart from the stuff you ask me to do I love how your stories take the scenic route whatever we did, whatever we said, conversations inside monologues retold as if the air itself didn’t need to breath I love how you mix metaphors, In your wandering sentences your inexplicable non-sequiturs and the inordinate lengths of your subordinate clauses I love how you speak in tongues I sometimes struggle to follow, yet speak fluently with animals in a language only they seem to understand  I love how you work a twelve hour day and spend the next six telling me about them I love how you have an answ...

 In 1968 the centenarian spinster who lived at the end of my little street of ten cottages died. It came as a bit of a blow to me and my partners in crime who used to have enormous fun at her expense, doing what 10 years-old kids did in the late sixties. It sounds a bit mean when I think about it now, but at the time we just saw it as innocent after-school entertainment. To youngsters like us, it was adrenaline-charged amusement to knock on her front door, clamber over the wall and wait for her to answer it. It was a risky game to light a banger and wait till it fizzed before launching the pretend grenade at her back door. And it was a big adventure climbing over the rickety fence from the cornfield at the bottom of her wild garden and crawling commando-style, through the weeds and perennials to try and sneak a peek through the yellowed net curtains around her darkened sash windows. Except that she never came to the door. Not once. Nor did she make one single ghostly appearance at ...