It was the day when I’d woken up and I suddenly understood whole sentences. Words, like more than just one at a time. Like ‘struck’ was struck in my chest. Literally. Festooned like the major melody in a concerto. Intertwined inside me, a bit sticky, but strangely furry, like a blanket.

Words are like an assault rifle. Sentences their ammo. And each paragraph was like getting hit by a round. Logic had been twisted up, into a rope, or maybe even a knot?

And also, that was when I realised, I was slipping like a fish around the rim of love. My tail had been thrashing against the will of something so much bigger than me. But sentences had allowed me to climb out.

When life is decided for you, you don’t have to think in more than single words at a time. It’s easy, really. Yet strings of words ebb you along a different flow, working up to a torrent. Paragraphs turn into pages, pages into tomes, and tomes into encyclopaedias.

Only now did I realise I’d been fumbling along to the word ‘tune’, solid, succinct, self-absorbed. I think I always knew there was something outside, but it had taken so long to come out.

And when my arranged husband woke up too, he realised with panic, that I wasn’t there - I had gone.