My face up to the sky...

He thought himself awake when he was already asleep. He saw the stars above his face, whirling on their silent and sleepless axis, and the leaves of the trees rustling against them, and he heard small changes in the grass. These little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they were, but never saw, then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling into the scented turf, into the warm ground, into the unending waters under the earth.

I want something that will make this all worth it; I want the good stuff. I’m ready for the goddamn silver lining. I want my brother to live down the street, I want a family; I want a friend to call when I need to know the right temperature to cook a goddamn cake. I want Sunday suppers and summer barbecues at my house by the sea. I want to stop second-guessing every tiny detail of every single day, every word that comes out of my mouth. I want to be brave. I want to jump without looking down all the time. I want to decorate the room of my child. I want to laugh as we grow together and realise that such a love never existed before. I want one of those perfect families, those perfect packages. I want it to happen to me as well. Despite the odds. And this is my first step towards that.