I wore that orange dress the day I saw two Irish terriers fucking on the beach in Paignton. I would have been a few months short of seven, meandering down the beach, collecting razor shells, flattening lug worm curls, when I noticed the two dogs on the shoreline. As I stopped and watched I heard a laugh and I jumped, not realizing my sister had been following me. It was an odd laugh, not embarrassed or giggly, but instead almost cruel and it made me pick up a stone and throw it high over the dogs into the water because I felt so sorry for them, humping away whilst Ginger laughed. I mean I didn’t understand what the dogs were doing but it just seemed so intense, so central to their experience of dogginess. Somehow all that existed for them was the way their bodies held together, balancing as the sea lapped their paws, eyes like clouded beer, the sunbrightness of their red and wheat coats merging until my stone and Ginger’s laugh spliced them apart leaving six prints indented into the wet sand. Ears up the dogs raced across and ran, one clock, the other anti, around us. They joined in with Ginger’s laughter and she stepped back, suddenly frightened. Go away. Go away. Retreating, the dogs set themselves on hind legs and sprang barking towards invisible branches, moons. And I too stretched my hands above my head and leapt and so all three of us bounded in one wet, pulsing, pitching, mad dog of a dance, our snouts full of sky, feeling the split of the horizon, a migraine of sand, the hinting muzzle of sex until the dogs, finally calm, slipped away along the coast .… Now my orange dress is a few small triangles in this quilt my mother made. A twelve pointed star radiating yolk yellow, cream spots, mustard and oyster pink paisley. A thirty year cacophony of trousers, shirts, tablecloths, cushion covers, blouses and head scarves. A history of sky and sand and hope and desire. Two dogs to cosy around myself at night.

1970, brown and cream I wake to noise The camper van hired to transport my brother to university Stacked full with boxes, belongings not so full of me I am five years old this small, this high tucked in beneath the brown and cream window parked beside a field of wheat it is midnight … maybe later A van with two parents, one baby, one sister, one brother and me I wake to noise And I have never smelt the sleep of all my family before never noticed our skin our breeze So much skin in our fold down beds our skin smells like folded notes in a purse a drawer of tarnished forks, a row of purple foxgloves Waking in the camper van moon man turned to full beam kneeling on my blanket to lift the curtain I am very smalL These are not cats These are not cows with bastard tails this is not fighting For the next thirty years I shall be scared of small women

Ninety-eight…ninety-nine…one hundred who is this? I belly-flopped over railings spidered ceilings rode buses, wrenched myself from manmade holes to clamber back inside light and darkhood the mist, the evening rabbit sky one…two…three polka spot skirts, tea dresses a strawberry sundae hat real leather gloves I tried to look pretty Emptied wardrobes and trunks in the family attic I tried so damned hard to be so damned pretty seventy-two…seventy-three…thirty-five belly-flopped, pretty I’m pretty and veil struck aisle skewered by golden prospectors fetti conned thrown hurl away kisses by jack asses and jills closer little steps to heaven little steps little steps fancy fancy white, white, white Daddy, carve me a murder hole mincing machine and I shall thrust my finger right inside and swing the handle round and around and around