castles

today i have been thinking about a special childhood friend who made easter plays and star biscuits and fairy letters with me. she was always the first person i told when i found a tiny letter from one of the fairies, we spent hours crawling between the hedges in my old secret garden leaving tiny plates of jelly and biscuit crumbs. we drank bottles of pink lemonade and jumped on the bed laughing at the noise of the lemonade inside us. i remember alot of things about this lovely girl but my favourite memory is sitting in her white cottage bedroom in pink and cream pyjamas looking through the windows of her dollshouse at all the tiny candles and cakes and she was singing, because she loved to sing and she had a sweet angel voice and she was singing this song

'there is a castle on a cloud, i like to go there in my sleep, aren't any floors for me to sweep, not in my castle on a cloud. there is a room that's full of toys, there are a hundred boys and girls, nobody shouts or talks too loud, not in my castle on a cloud. there is a lady all in white, holds me and sings a lullaby, she's nice to see and she's soft to touch, she says "cosette, i love you very much." i know a place where no one's lost, i know a place where no one cries, crying at all is not allowed, not in my castle on a cloud.'

and from then on i fell in little girl love with her, because every little girl falls in love with another little girl at some time, and she was mine, ocean eyes with ribbons in her hair








sometimes books make me sad because they make me wonder where all the wendys and dorothys and cassandras and tiger lilys and elsies and frances of the world are hiding