Jen Hadfield

OK. Fragments of bone wash up on the shore, on which survive the remnants of a lost language (coded in pigment, gesso, sgraffito).

Fragments of language wash up in the semi-consciousness between waking and sleeping, which the watching brain scrambles into near-sense and non-sense.

Fragments from a lost valley society...that much was clear. Perhaps sea-levels rose to demolish and digest a midden of these mostly inconsequential missives. No, not letters. More, stories...perhaps a coming of age gift would be a bone book of these ordinary stories of the people.

'Tying a ribbon on his shoe – 'well, we're not quite sure about those two.'

'What it's like to be addled with...[lost or illegible]'

'My old lass and my extinction...'

'I'm not as old as I sound I was...if you cut me trunkwise and count the rings.'

'It happened one day, God's country...'

'My bright green uncle...'

'''It happened one day'', I said it screwingly...'

'She must be looked at like a person!'

'It'll be the first one though – jeeez.'

'I don't mind king paper and the calf paper.'

'He needed all the necessary darts.'

'People were lifting that noisy ogg (?) [indistinct/illegible]