Katya Balen

But I think about the stories hiding in my pocket and I can already feel the beginnings and the middles and the ends start to stitch themselves together in my brain and my muscles work on their own.

In my head I think I remember the day she left but the memory is like trying to hold water in my cupped hands and it trickles away before my eyes.

When I try and remember her now it’s like she’s been sliced out of the memory and all that’s left is a black person-shaped shadow where she should be, or sometimes she’s there but then her edges
fuzz and curl into smoke and nothing’s left. I hate her for leaving the wild and I hate her for leaving us and I hate her for leaving our perfect little pocket of the world.

German has all these strange and magical words that have a million feelings curled up in the letters, like being happy when someone else is sad or longing to be somewhere where you’re not right now. I only get that when we go to the village. My favourite one means forest solitude, and it’s the feeling of being alone in the woods and being calm and happy and safe, and she didn’t want that.

He puts his hand
on my head and I lean into him and I can hear the beat of his heart and I am small and warm and safe

I have two whole walls of books and I like to put them in colour order so that they make a rainbow of spines. I never get rid of them and I can pull one off at random and remember the story all over again and how it felt the first time I read it and what was happening.

ening.

I have a patchwork quilt on my bed made from
triangles of material that used to belong to my old dresses and shirts and jumpers and trousers. The shapes slot together into something new and I love it because it’s stories from the past sewn together and curled around me.

Whenever I find a new secret in the earth I put it in my treasure chest and it’s like my head is full of other lives.

October is the best month when you live in the woods and maybe when you don’t, but I wouldn’t know. It’s when the trees are starting to shake leaves on to a patchwork floor and the ground is bright as fire. The air is crisp with a whisper of frost and the sky smells like smoke. Everything feels new and exciting.

He never says my name once when he can say it twice, like it’s the words to a song and the sound rises like music.