November views

My spire is sharpening in the early winter sky, black and crisp against the luminous lilac. The forecasts say that frost will descend next week, with softening snow on the way.

But for now, the spire is a razor. Just like it was last November, when I spent a whole week staring at it from the chair in the sitting room, where I was trying to persuade my body to relax, to uncoil, to stop hurting. It couldn't, of course, since something was seriously wrong in my belly, so wrong that I would soon spend a week in a hospital bed. But I didn't know that, and so I watched the spire, and waited.

Twelve months on, and I am well. This afternoon, while the shadow spire watched me, I wrote some passages in my story that are beautiful, at least to me. I'm working. It's working. It feels like a miracle. Yet it's not the miracle I hoped most desperately for.

Same view, different girl, different November.