“Yesterday I walked to Clerkenwell in the morning and stood by the iron grate where the Fleet flows, and listened, and imagined I heard the waters of all the rivers I have known - the head of the Fleet at Hampstead where I played when I was young, and the wide Thames, and the Blackwater, with its secrets that were hardly worth keeping. Then it carried me in spate to the Essex shore, to all the marsh and the shingle, and I tasted on my lips the salt air which is also like the flesh of oysters, and I felt my heart cleaving, as I felt it there in the dark wood on the green stair and as I feel it now: something severed, something joined. The sun on my back through the window is warm and I hear a chaffinch singing. I am torn and I am mended - I want everything and need nothing - I love you and I am content without you.” HeartbreakSlow BurnSarah PerryThe Essex Serpent Book:The Essex Serpent Source: The Essex Serpent
“I must tell you how I carry you about in me like a growth I should excise with my knife - it is weighty and black, it ACHES, it gives out something in my bloodstream, in all the sore endings od my nerves - but I could not cut it out and live!” The Essex Serpent Book:The Essex Serpent Source: The Essex Serpent