3. Slugs

I awoke in the dark. Perhaps I was delirious, but I had dreamed all the sunflowers were eaten by enormous mouths. A hundred, I’d say, gone overnight, and the seeds hardly split. Yes, I am coming to realise that the only horrors are in my head.

4. Oyster Shells

Sleet off the sea blinds the right eye. Under my boots these faces of old men at their gruel, their blue craniums. Meanwhile the wind is blowing everything backwards and flaying the duneskins into the sky.

5. The Nettle Picker

The next day my fingers throb pale and purple, the poisoned nerves at least alive. I took the crowns with the pollen on them through a mist of webs. Now, here’s a black tonic I stir from a half-remembered spell.

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