whatever's there when you wake up ¬

He filled a bucket.  The collapsed kelp slipped into the lukewarm water.  Her leaves felt flabby in his hand. Grains of sand settled into her sticky mucus.  Drying her long flat strips of hair he read into the local sea's diary.  The wind had shaken the pebbles most violently, unclasped her tiny fingers from the stone she clung to.  Her time in the forest faded away. He closed the kitchen door, wrapped her in a white tablecloth and carried her upstairs on tiptoe.  With both hands he covered the bed with a blooming spread the way men threw nets on distant fishing grounds.  He rested her on rippled weave, unfolded her palm leaf by leaf until she joined the flowers in the shade.

Hospitalfield Arbroath Scotland ¬ Interdisciplinary Residency August 2015

In loving memory of Elisa Dewulf and Adolphus Mostrey, my grandparents, refugees from Ostend during the Great War in Wadesmill/Herts UK

(Laminaria Digitata, algae used at Hospitalfield as a mineral source and winter cover for vegetable garden and ornamental plants.)