Alone in the Jardin du Luxembourg, watching pigeons pick and pry in the pall of Paris days, you feud with your furies among the endless round of gritty coffee trays, tisanes, and a surfeit of promised cures.

Imprisoned by your heart's altitude your losing left lung is X-rayed out of life. You find false hope beyond the doctor's curtain, dazzled by duplicitous rays. You feverishly buy a hat you'll never wear, on one of your elusive ‘better days’.

Stories bloom and bliss unwritten; you write letters lying down. Accustomed to invalid ways, the furies dance sans mercy in the city haze. From your sickbed you learn that becoming ‘real’ is the only antidote to breathlessness.