I graduated.

I think I might stay.

I don't know what happened. Somewhere along the way I got used to being a matron in a boarding school. In just two weeks. How surreal. The rediculous number of hours and I feel calm and in control and even happy and mostly quite relaxed. I feel like staying. I can't say I feel like this every day, but I have only been here a couple of weeks, and I have felt it consistently for perhaps 48 hours, and it feels warm. For the first time since coming here, I've felt able to work on my novel.

The boys are pretty much like boys anywhere. Money doesn't make any difference, but lack of free time and parental contact does, I think. They become much more adult and self reliant. The twelve year olds talk to me about insurance and university league tables. The seven year olds don't want help with anything, if they can help it. My time here has expanded my world view.

So I moved in to a boarding school yesterday.

It's nothing like Harry Potter. I'm scared and homesick, and I'm 21. I'm not sure why people subject seven year olds to that.

I want to be the sort of teacher who smiles at the children and tells them, 'all ideas are good ideas'.

Then they might become murderers, or brilliant creatives with nothing to sell. Or maybe they'd become these things regardless.

Sometimes a piece of my nail polish gets stuck to the stickers I use when wrapping gifts at work and strangers get some of my DNA for Christmas.

But they don't know it because the stickers are not see-through. I guess some other people or maybe the same people also recieve some of my skin cells for Christmas.

Customers come to my shop and buy Christmas gifts and I wrap them in tissue paper and put them in gift boxes. The shop actually belongs to someone else, so I have to compliment the customers on at least one of the things that they buy. That is a rule. If I don't do it I could get fired. Sometimes they buy some really disgusting beige pvc bag or like a set of 4 leg warmers for dogs. I could also get fired for wearing flowery skirts and being late from taking my Nan to lunch. It didn't happen yet though because I am actually very good making customers more happy and more calm than before they met me.

I sell some cheap metal jewellery to a woman. The jewellery has gold glitter stuck on it, on purpose. I talk to the woman about her plans for Christmas and about my mum's job as a travel agent. I pretty much just talk about whatever. In real life I am very quiet but at work I chat because I want them to feel calmer and happier from making a human connection. I ask the woman if she has many gifts left to buy and if she likes the ones she already got. She is worried that her neice may not like the gold glitter jewellery. I tell her that I would be happy if I recieved the gold glitter jewellery. I have no idea if this is true. She asks me where I got my hat. I got it in Canada and I am meant to lie to her and say I got it in the shop I work in. I don't want to lie to her.

The woman really wants me to meet her son. She says, 'I really want you to meet my Son. He works in the o2 shop. He's the one with the afro. Do you know him?' I tell her I don't really live in this town, and I haven't been to the other end of the shopping centre where the o2 shop is, not in 4 years or so. She tells me I should pop along and have a chat but not tell him that I know his mum. She tells me that I seem really nice. She tells me again to pop along and chat with her son.

A few days later I go to the other end of the shopping centre and I see the guy with the afro in the o2 shop. He is laughing. He looks friendly. He is sixteen, maybe seventeen. As I walk past he looks at my flowery skirt and maybe my face or my glasses. I pretend not to see him. I don't know why I do that.

UEA

Dear UEA,

I love you.

Please stop emailing me.

It just makes the seperation more painful.


Yours,

Amy

Poem by Suzanne Catlin

Here is a fresh poem by my friend and coursemate from Kingston's Creative Writing programme, Suzanne Catlin. I think the poem is good, the language at times lovely. Thanks, Suzanne.


Atheist Ashes

We are gathered through unwavering resolve
To walk through these heavy iron-wrought doors together
Strengthened by the people we’ve known,
Weakened by the people who’ve left us.

And as I sit I realise something akin to gravity,
The maw of realization becoming a chasm
So wide I cannot see the teeth only the deep void;
Only the nothingness behind my own eyelids.

Hymns echo in awe around the rafters but I can’t breathe.
So I sit there lips tight with eyes dry and burning
Leaning against the cut lilies already wilting;
And I’m scared but not enough to be fooled.

There is no God, no metaphor, only silence;
A thrilling crescendo of imagined noise,
A puff of cold air along a prickled nape,
A play of coloured light on pews and stone.

I stay long after the people are gone,
Down by the crumpled bibles and prayer cushions,
The chill settling into the sinew and bone,
And beyond the doors the sky tears itself open,
Becoming a thunderstorm.