A promise of blue

Sprouting bulbs in a pot: ruddy and greenish and smelling of earth and growth, and a label that entices with the promise of Delft Blue, evokes the headier smell of hyacinths in bloom.

The last of January's small stones.

Shopper horror

The department store's hectic air does not support life. 

If we all became trapped in here we'd soon be dead.

Today's small stone.

Passer-by

" I saw this woman taking photos of bits of dead leaf or something on the ground... No, much older than you, Mum... Yeah, weird."

Today's small stone.

Familiar

The familiar tree tilts, as the world tilts sometimes, reveals the doggy snout and dangling foreleg of its hidden creature.

Today's small stone.

Yikes

It starts in the pit of the stomach and wells up in the throat, branches to grasp and echo in the back teeth on both sides, closely cups the head and comes pinching and pulling together at the crown. A forceps birth: I name her anxiety.

Today's small stone.

Go-slow

This bus moves so slowly. It's stopping, surely, going to rock itself down, down into the ground instead of inching forward? Like my mind.

Today's small stone.

White legs

Ahead of me is a tall young woman in a dark, shaggy coat and unseasonable white cotton trousers. Her thin, fast-moving legs twinkle, white lines in the grey light, hup-two, hup-two, compelling the eye as she recedes into the distance.

Today's small stone.

Naked fruit

Dimpled, flecked with gold,
the yellow pear's fragrant skin
barely holds its juice.

A stone for the river.

Flick

Me? she says. No, she says. Ha! Her stiff black hair flicks back and forth with every word. 

Ha. Flick. No!

A stone for the river. 

Darkness almost falls

On Clapham Common at dusk: just above our heads, the spreading trees hold up the heavy purple sky with their bare arms - without them it would fall.

A stone for the river.

Indian restaurant window

The wooden screens and paper garlands evoke distant, spicier places.

The reflected skyline too seems not from here.

Today's small stone.

... then ten come along at once

Ten buses, one behind the other, each identical in form, swaying slowly forward in identical motion, each seething with people like parasites in a swollen body. They loom for a moment, weird and alienating giant creatures, then blend back into the shimmering weave of normality.

Today's small stone.

Intimation

A frail play of dappled light comes blinking through a crack in grey skies that seemed impermeable.

Today's small stone.

Fresh as paint

Radiating colour and oozing succulence, the carrots, framed in their wooden box, are like a still life painting and give as much pleasure.

Today's small stone.

Vacuum-packed

Sloshing and chugging and shoulder to shoulder, chock-a-block, eyeless. There is no light, not even in the puddles, which today are dirty and opaque and harbour no reflections. 

today's small stone.

Gull

A seagull's cry: the wide, damp street outside flickers and becomes a wide, damp, biscuit-coloured beach.

Today's small stone.

Quiver

Wind in the trees: they quiver, quiver against the sky. So do I.

Today's small stone.

Point to something

Why does the arrow draw me, scurrying, late and in the rain? I think because it’s all too easy to feel trapped and enclosed, and anything that points - points to somewhere else.

Today's small stone.

Blue, yellow, red

Piled, teetering and scattering across the road are all these huge chopped-off lengths of blue and yellow plastic piping, with a fallen outer circle of red plastic barriers - toys for the giants who come out to play in the city at night.

Today's small stone.

Hmm

Two paperbacks nuzzle up to each other, perhaps uneasily, in my bag: How to become slightly happier and get a bit more done by Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman and Melancholy, a novel by the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.

Today's small stone.