Leaving Home by Susan Lander

You open the door and you

                                                                                                               hesitate.

A timid seafarer,

angled, unsure.

                                                         Behind you

                                                                                    a billowing sail

                                                    of love.

Terror tries it’s best to bind you,

whispers crippling

hateful

shackles     of fear.

But courage

And strength

And desire

You remind yourself that you have these, and more.

So much more.

So

you take that love

                                         grip the sides of your tiny skiff

                                                                                                                                              and launch.

Illustration by Sky Costello-Ross

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Susan Lander worked as a nurse before turning her attention, perhaps inevitably, to writing. She is certain that nursing is much easier than writing. Patients, unlike her characters, at least largely try to behave themselves. She lives in Wiltshire with her long-suffering husband, whose unique skills include a first class honours in camouflage when she appears waving a new story, and their two delinquent cats, Tigger and Midnight. She enjoys behaving badly with friends and family and vows never to grow up, believing it to be vastly overrated.