In part 7 of new series My Shorts Alice shares a snippet of her new novel in progress.....
She felt the pull of the years - the fears, the tears, the wanting and the needing that destroy good sense..... the breath - taken - away by sudden falls. They pulled at her very existence, unpicking her bones and marrow, blood and bone. They pulled at her eye sockets , her tongue and all the words she had had to say out into the world when she was surrounded by the cushion of air and smells and colours. She felt as if it was she pulling herself apart as she pulled out the rows of knitting, stitch by beating stitch, the entrails of wool pooling at her feet as her murderous hands worked to a dark Beat Beat Beat.
Still breathing. Not dead
Each thread she pulled reunited her with her life force. Beat Beat Beat. Her hands grasped and pulled like she was destroying life itself. The wool sprang out of her grasp. She clutched it and the dance began again. The wool dance of life. The wool dance of death. Unravelling sunny afternoons, blades of grass, skinned knees and the shade of an apple tree. Unravelling growing pains, Sunday afternoon bandstands and the kiss of the fire on old dark night after old dark night. She pulled through the regrets and the doubts her palms had created. She pulled. She tugged. She fought to make it right. To undo the work of those hands that did not help - although they thought they did. For nothing grown in the shadow of grief can ever really thrive.
Extract of new novel - work in progress - nearly done. Alice lives at 361diamond.co.uk
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