Elise Shaw

When you have a bad family life,

you search for home in other places.

Sometimes,

it’s within the castle walls

of a magical friendship,

or the quiet sanctuary

of your favourite book.

But sometimes,

it’s in the decrepit hovel

of a man who, too,

had a bad family life

and never found those places

for himself.

And instead of looking for home,

he constructed one

with the bad he had learnt.

And you,

my messy lost girl,

are the perfect foundation

for his plot.