The Passion of the Posset

My passion died when I was salt, Alice-deep in tears. It was only young but it was warped, grown to the shape of its secret box, its tender bits rubbed to leather. It was wipe-clean and it frequented bars, drank pink drinks through straws and flashed its stocking-tops. It brought me out in a rash but it was hungry and it was strong. Then its batteries went flat and its sequins fell off one by one and clogged the hoover for weeks and it died runtish, bald and exposed. Oh it was cheap and oh it did not fit and it bit and it chafed but it was mine, I made it from things I found in bushes and oh I miss it so.

Now I need to grow a new one, well-fitting as fur, moulded to shape like witches’ wax. I need the taste again, the marzipan toad squatted melting on my tongue, the waves of brine and honey. I’ll have to bury clams at midnight outside the adult bookshop, eat nothing but popping candy and bathe in condensed milk. And then somewhere in the oubliettes inside, a poppet will stir, open its mouth and make a sound like herons.

Don't Sit Under the Lilac Tree

Sometimes I get sad because I don’t know any other monsters, and then I cry, steady tears of condensed milk. I sleep with one foot out of the blankets at night but nothing ever bites. I have walked a thousand miles on my hands and slept in graves both empty and full, but every time I thought I met a monster it was the shadow of a lilac tree. If I met another monster we could be penpals, and I could send it illuminated manuscripts about the state of my bowels and little sachets of silverfish. I wish more things came in sachets.

Snout and his brother are playing some kind of computer game in the living room and so I am trapped in here, listening to The Andrews Sisters and eating my finger-skin. I should be tending to my book, the slime-cauled goblin-child I birthed in the bathroom, but I think I have postnatal depression. It doesn’t work if you drink the gin after the fact.

Sadness

Clement Freud has died.