A woman in yellow, dancing. Her narrow hands, dancing. Her eyes, dancing. Her calves and her toes, dancing. Each part of her body participant in motion, then still. Anticipation. Restraint. Calm before a storm-burst, her euphoria.

Six women, dancing. The strength and grace of archers. Purpose in their eyes and in the weight of their heads, held back on delicate necks. Warriors. Weight shifts forward to bent knees; hold. Spring back, hind legs ready to receive. Hold. Turn, together. Intention in their wrists and in their ankles, grace in their power, power in their poise.

A feeling of yearning: a pull, a pulse, a flutter.

Sinking down to sleep. Hovering on a lower layer of consciousness. Then submerged. Rising suddenly on a startling thought, a thought dressed in white.

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Warm wind, a smell of thawing earth. A dank odour: memories of wet dog and melt ponds. Take it back, further. March, my mother’s voice. My brother’s rainsuit, rubber jacket and matching plaid pants (it was the eighties, after all). Puddles with a shell of ice so thin I saw air bubbles moving, ice that shattered crystalline at the touch of a twig or my red boot.

Is this how it will feel to remember now, thirty years from now?

An aged German shepherd in elegant decrepitude. His hind legs circling like bicycle wheels. When he bays, his bark is an old man’s woof.

Walking fast into gusts, a pleasant strain in my haunches, my thighs. I can feel flesh shifting, the shape of it, its weight.