1. Sunlight hits mirrors with direct honesty. Words lie exactly where they were left, ready to snap into bright sentences. Sleep welcomes and releases with the soft precision of the tide.
  2. Skin tightens into scales; not armor but a thickening that gleams, absorbing light and heat for those minutes when clouds obscure the sun. Silence and sleep are delightful as fur.
  3. Light breeze is the first sign of barometric change yet this weather feels romantic. Even the wind is poetry. The air is clean and familiar but inland the leaves are rustling.
  4. The draught is gentle but rising, leaves now in constant motion. Thoughts are scattered and sentences crackle with static. White space on the page permits quiet insurrections.
  5. This is still manageable. Coffee cups or wineglasses are always in reach as the wind raises dust and flurries papers. Offshore, anxieties form whitecaps.
  6. A fresh breeze implies cleanliness and health. This is inaccurate. Lists blow away and life feels cluttered with the flotsam of others’ decisions. Words spray and sleep sways to a rhythm that is hard to keep.
  7. Waves build and break in relentless sets. There’s whistling in the wires and the sun is constantly behind clouds, so who is to say when it passes the yard-arm? The phone rings out. The inbox fills. Sleep is tangled in the looping playback of regret.
  8. Every direction is headwind. There is only the bed, the couch and the weight of deadlines. Dark energy drives every process. Strange, unsettling thoughts blink on like stars, sharp and old. Sleep is a fox.
  9. The golden age is always in the past. Everything is edge and squall, words streaking the air like dirty foam. All relationships are pacts with grief. The sky is low, pressure high. To leave the house is to risk damage.
  10. The weight of air takes on the heft of the universe. The dark seethes with anxieties and sleep is far too kind for the cynicism of night. Communication lines are down. Chimneys and roofs are threatened. To venture out is unthinkable.
  11. The world can only be read in translation. All trees not uprooted are potential targets. Sharp edges gleam with promise. Moon-shaped hollows are carved beneath eyes. This was all decided years ago.
  12. Thoughts shake out their wildness like savages, as if the magic of facts can hold back the tides, the gales, the wars. Self-medication. Self-harm. Words are expletives targeted at the body. Everything beautiful is far away, so distant it’s invisible.
  13. Widespread structural damage. Zero visibility. This is the point of collapse, the black hole. Yet there’s a calm that only now feels as if it’s always been here. A pure, deep truth waiting to be unearthed like a fossilized bone. Here, in the centre, it is clear and still. It is up to you.