It occurred to her while she was standing at the bus stop cold and alone last night that she was hearing voices in her head again and they were saying things like "Night time is all about velvet and starlight!" and "Every glass cupboard should hold at least one hand painted tea cup." So she turned to look over her shoulder towards the deeper corners of the street where a bus headlight might appear suddenly, but the voices turned with her, whispering "We were children who lived in the days of a cotton-polyester economy; we could tuck up our entire week's wages in the double fold of a knee sock." And still there was no bus light in the distance, and the stars were wrapped up in a blanket of fog, and there were no cupboards nearby, nor teacups of any sort, and she had not worn a pair of polyester knee socks in years, and all these facts made her wonder if she was slipping away faster now into a world nobody else could see or hear. "There is relevance in poetry if it get's a person's attention," the voices whispered to her. "All the world spins on a titled axis, so you can feel at home here, and in good company while we echo back tiny random fragments of your life to you in your own soul's native tongue, for what else would you rather do with all this cold, dark, starless sky while you stand waiting for your bus all alone?"
Let this mark out the first actual recording of her symptoms, and yes, Doctor, we are all in agreement that she did hear voices in her head again last night, and has for years, and what do you suppose it means when she wakes up and hears them again, saying things like "This would be a good day to turn over a little patch of earth by the front walkway and slip some tulip bulbs and ranunculus clusters down below the star creeper as future proof that one Winter's Thursday morning you did your part to help beautify the coming spring!" ?
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