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Let's go play outside in the sandbox.

I'll be Fenella- Fen, if seven letters is four too many, three syllables two long- and you, well, you can be whomever. True, two, you can be whenever, however, whichever - if you want to be three, four. And if that's too much trouble, too many bee's knobbly, scabby, six year old's (I fell on the pavement playing cops and robbers) knees, you can just be. I don't mind. I don't mean to ask for the moon or the waves in the sky, that twinkle and wave like the clouds on the sea. Or the stars. I don't mean to ask for them, either. You know, the ones that dance in the backseat of your Daddy's red pickup truck, them that smile their secrets in the rear-view mirror when they don't think you're looking?

I'm sorry, that's not true, I lied. I'd like a star from Orion's belt, please. Can you do that for me? I'll put it in the shoe-box under my bed and keep it for my ever and ever. Along-side and just like the postcard that you wrote me, when we were ten, that I keep even now, though I'll never read it again. Is that too much to ask?

Let's go play outside and get sand in our hair. Let's smell the dandylions fresh, like they came from the store in a box, not a jar, as they sit between our teeth like roses, not weeds, unburdened by thorns. We can pretend that we live in our castle, skyscrapers high, and that the buckets are red mountains far, far across the pool.

I'll warn you right now and here, there's a good chance we might get lost, sweeping shadows tagged between the trees and under the rug in the grand entrance halls of Rome. It's okay, we'll find each other the way we do in dreams, when nothing but hope is left to find in your silent hands and my nimble lips. I'll call out, 'Telephone!' and you'll answer 'Elephant?' and what really happened, no one will ever know.

There won't be a map, but the smell of chlorine is sweet, like freedom in May, and we'll be childhood friends for ever and never, and it'll stay that way until the day you or I die. And even then there'll be memories, sweet like your laugh, of faded colours and photographs with names scrawled across their backs; ones that we chose ourselves, like Lucy or Dan, that they carry across our make-believed land in cloaks, with flowers not daggers, and tattered bunny rabbit ears.

It's empty and small, and cathedrals tall. You can hear a whisper on the other side of this wall, where I lost my ball, in that other climbing, winding hall. I understand that in some places those are called staircases but still, it's been ages, why don't you call? It's alright, I know we won't grow old out here under the swings; that it doesn't ever happen that way. But oh, I wish, I pray to the top of this old brick tree-fort that it could.

Even if never, when the clock starts to sing ten-thirty, you've forgotten to unpin that white, jumped-up tail from the seat of your trousers, or acquired the moves of a cat on a dark, fence-old night, I'll be here, with the tight-rope to walk.

With Tentative Joy,

Your Loving Fenella.