The scale of the baby snail, so small, so very sweet as it slides like wet silk along the greenhouse, brought back memories and allowed me to wallow in the past with reliable rose-tinged glasses that the uncertainty of the future doesn’t allow for. But it wasn’t just memories of pet insects kept in jam jars this baby snail had. It kept a home like a Cadbury’s swirl balanced on its back. This wobbly, sticky shell could so easily be defeated with the pinch of my clumsy fingers. It was exciting both then and now to think I could have something real, something that lives and breathes, right here and now completely at my mercy of my impulses. As I smoked a cigarette outside I thought about my partner upstairs, still sleeping, and offered the baby snail a verdant Maple leaf for feasting on or sheltering from what looked like a rain storm brewing.
Being Erica 