"An intriguing sketch of someone who could have come from the pages of a book herself."
She stands by Shakespeare, Austen and by Chinua Achebe
while things fall apart.
I watch her move, clear-eyed and crazy as she takes each paper
chunk from the top shelf.
The pages flipwhisper as she flickbook fans them with her thumb.
'Can I help?' I ask.
'I'm no passive consumer,' she says, and I smell dogfood and
tinned carrots on her.
'I don't sit and half-blink before crystal screens and pixel feeds.
I suck the ink from
the white and stain my brain with ideas. I argue as I
read, I chew, I eat,
I digest pulp ideas and puke what disagrees, what grates, what
niggles, what belly,
soul and mind rejects. I will not watch a tasteless, occular
I.V.F. Nourish
me, fibres, bindings all. Give me something I can hold, be it
glue and deadwood scraps.'
I nod and hand her something new to stew. 'Read this. You'll like it.'
Rhian Waller is a graduate of an English Literature and Creative Writing BA, and she is also about to begin a Postgrad doctorate in Creative and Critical writing. She has been producing stories of various quality since she was five, and has managed to publish a handful of poems. She would very much like to publish some more.