37-38 Years Old

I am stopping everything for a 'year'. Shutting down the imaginary world where I have a daughter and she gets older by one year for every 365 words I write. I need to fix a few things. Everyone in the imaginary world will lose a year. Only I will know.

I have deleted my imagination. In its place is an 'Object'. It serves as a bookmark to remind me there is supposed to be something there. I am alone with my object. Everything feels nice.

The Object is a shape. I regard the shape; I pick it up and carry it around with me. First under my right arm, next under my left; as though The Object is some important document.

Now the Object is a small oblong of wood. Inexpensive, ugly, a cast off from something horribly clunky. I give it a good shake. I shout at it, shout right into the grain. I toss it high into the air and don't catch it. I listen to the sad knockknockknock music of the landing. I plug it into the internet and download everything in Wikipedia into it. All the words in Wikipedia are now written into the fibre of the wooden object. It grows ugly with the shape of the letters which teem like crude oil inside.

"Now you're a data stick!" I really don't know why I say these things.

I immediately regret giving The Object so much powerful knowledge. It copies itself a billion times. To stop it multiplying further I turn it into stone. The Object becomes a vast landscape, a stone desert and every rock I stand on knows the secret of my soul.

In the air is a song:

"We have lost the mountain.
We have burnt the gorge."

Panicked, I think of something pretty and the desert is devoured by flowers. Poppies, cornflowers, bluebells bloom. With the next wind the song on the air sounds much happier:

"Valley and glenn. Valley and glenn"

Every single word from wikipedia floats harmlessly away as pollen. All copies delete.

The Object is now a bouquet, which I hold, standing still like a clown.

"hu-rrah!" I say this to no one.