Scent of roses and dried scabs up scabs, of sticky things, old stains and pretty-wet-tea-towells. Kitchens and earthworms, Grandmothers and small gold frogs. She is the girl who lived entirely outside, who spoke to the woodlice, playing midwife to their yellow jellied eggs, with dirty feet and tattered dress. She is both the call to the wild and the call home for dinner-time. She suspends between these states: domestic and graveyard, mould and pearls, and pink, so much dirty dirty pink pink. but now she is here and with child, the woodlice crawl towards her bloated belly, our turn now, they say, worms are crawling up her thighs, they all squeeze. She is sorry, and guilty, and confession, and apologies to the birds, shrines to all the little dead froggies and their wide open mouths. She loves their many cycles. She is gold and pink and mud-colour. She is aprons and child, bearing belly, sharp teeth and claws. Germs and kisses and promises to every living thing that ever was. She is being eaten alive here. Sex, death, insects and Motherhood. So will she raise her little baby outside, the pond was asking? And all the rats in their garden graves wiggle their noses “What will baby be?” And the dream house, or roses and shadows and candlelit meals, will it be burnt down or all washed away in a flood? Who rises from the ashes of Motherhood, and as what? Only skin is transformation, shedding, outside, inside, bringing the outside in and the inside out. Remember: No grief is held for flowers with their heads chopped off in winter.

Become.