i dont know how i ever fly

I have the loveliest back garden. With climbing ivy and purple flowers and white hydrangeas and a massive rose bush covered in little yellow sprays. Two tomato trees I’m determined to grow. My mother grew hundreds. Quite literally, hundreds. I can grow two. Probably not.

I thought, for a moment, back in May, I’d like to have tanned legs this summer. That thought came back to haunt me. The legs remain, as ever, poultry-coloured.

The tops of my neighbours’ houses, lined up all symmetrically, remind me of Brighton Beach houses. This makes me smile.

I want a hammock. Something bright and colourful. To swing in and catch Vitamin D in and just be all good-feeling in. But I don’t want ticks in my hair. Ticks terrify me. I use to love sleeping in the grass. I don’t do that anymore. Ticks are why.

Maybe I’ll put up a massive Moroccan canopy instead. I saw something like this once, at a friend’s house in Greece. It shaded patios and pillows and pools. Books about espionage. I could do nothing but sit beneath it until it got too hot for me to sit any more. With a tea set my mother gave me.

There’s always the problem of the sun, of course. My splotchy hands – my leopard spots. And that fat ole Robin that keeps mistaking my hat for a nest.