Dandelion seeds drifting across a shoulder

It is gone two in the morning and the sodium lamps outside the flat have turned the ceiling the colour of weak tea, so I am writing on the back of the gas bill because the good paper went in the move. You will laugh. I have been awake since midnight thinking about the field behind Mill Lane, the one Dad mowed every June and swore he would never mow again.

Remember how we used to count the seeds? You would hold the clock up to your mouth and blow, and I would count out loud, and you always cheated by starting at four. Eleven seeds went off the first one we ever picked. I wrote the number on my hand in biro so I would not forget it, and it washed off in the bath that same night, which felt like a sign at the time.

Today a man from the council was reading meters on my landing and I asked him whether dandelions ever came up behind the bins in the car park. He said they came up through anything. He seemed pleased by that, as if it were a kindness the city had done him. I stood there with my hand on the banister and thought, that is the whole trick, isn't it, to take root wherever the wind drops you and not mind the concrete.

I am not coming home for the weekend. I want you to know that is not because of you. Go and blow one for me in the front garden, the big one by the gate, and count out loud. Start at one this time. I will be counting too, from here, with the window open and the traffic going past like a river.

Love, Nell