I used whale bones, a dormouse, half a dog, a lot of weasel, cat, a few horse bones and if the postman is right in what he says – there are human bones in her tail. I am sure it is not true. He was so drunk he thought it was a real mermaid, he is so drunk he thinks he’s still in the navy. I like to think about the 260 human bones – skull, jaw, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacrum, ribs, breastbone, scapula, clavicle, humerus, radius, ulna. Sometimes I hang bones out to dry and they clink in the breeze.

I slide the drawers closed in the bone library.

It is very satisfying.

They glide, you see – then click shut. A fine cabinetmaker built them. My filing is immaculate.

When I fall asleep at night I am always thinking of carpals, or metacarpals, or phalanges, or tibia, or fibula, or tarsals, or metatarsals. I dream of a piano with long bones as keys. There is an irregular bone in every single one of us and it is not for conforming with the rest, brother, mercy, mercy, mercy! There are osteoblasts, osteocytes, osteoclasts, osteolite. I’ve been dreaming lately about a man who has finger bones for teeth and he bares them like a whale in the great blue deep. I could have felt bad about building my mermaid out of bone but – some kind of siren is calling to me. I can feel her in No. 10 Luckenbooth Close. Each night as I go to sleep it feels like I am being lured out to the rocks by her singing.

I have begun to do things without thinking.

The other day I bought a bunch of medical texts on the human skeleton. I have been looking at it. I feel a density every time I lay down lately. I feel a gentle indent at the foot of my bed as I drop off. If I was superstitious I would say someone is sitting there watching me sleep.

I try to think about good things because the light feels as if it is fading.

There were penguins in the Dick Vet today.

I had to rebuild a horse.

The skeleton is going into a cabinet downstairs. I became obsessed with him. Two hundred and five bones. The skull alone had fourteen major bones. My favorites: temporal bone, zygomatic bone, palatine bone, parietal, sphenoid, vomer, pterygoid. I have built a skeleton horse so good he could win the damn Derby. My horse has evolved over 55 million years! They carry foals for eleven months and that four-legged elegance comes out walking and whinnying and running from day one. Don’t tell me we are the most evolved species, we are just the most upright ones – with irrational levels of delusion.

They should put horses in charge.

I am sure it is a glitch of evolution that we are dominant.