Sometimes I wish I could fall asleep and stay there until this moment next year.
But then I think about it. I get stuck in the technicalities, and somewhere in those dreams I never had a child fills the shell of a tortoise with cement, as the creature plays hide and seek with the wind. In theory, the wind lost; but in life it was the tortoise, and that child grew up to be a murderer.

**

In my first year of high school English we were asked the difference between a Wish and a Want. Personally, I believe(d) that a Want is something that could happen in a hypothetical world; but a Wish is impossible. That's why we place them on stars, you see: because we can't.

**

In Primary One I cried and stormed out of the class because I couldn't write a story. My defence was that the plotline was ridiculous: there was no chance that I was ever going to be skinny enough to fit down a plughole, so why should I write about it? Fiction is just a fancy word for Lie, and I Lied when I said I wasn't one to conform: in that same year I pretended I couldn't read because everyone else was only learning. I kept it up for a whole page.

**

When I was thirteen my mother told me that there would be fireworks when I had my first kiss. A year later, on the 5th of November, I felt absolutely nothing; but the sky was set alight. The irony lay on the concrete beside my feet and I kicked it as my apathy became repulsion.

**

I don't cry anymore and I write anyway. Maybe it's because I don't drink enough, or perhaps I learned how wonderful it is to feel absolutely nothing and put it on paper. The "Sylvia Plath Effect" states that females who indulge in creative writing are likely to experience mental illness, and the poets more than most. Of course there may be an element of truth in it: there's nothing like dwelling on the world to make one a little destabilised, and everybody knows that Thought is just a pretty word for Poison. For a moment I wonder if people are not being slightly serious when they refer to me as insane, and my blood runs to a metaphorically cold standstill for a delicious blue moment. Then I realise why my desire to sleep for a year is but a Wish: I'd have to learn how to live again and it was difficult enough the first time. The tortoise chose not to bite fingers and I choose not to stick my head in the oven; I'll have a coffee instead.