There are times, many times, when words are not enough, like those Saturday nights in the last century when I slipped all I had, syllable by syllable, into a public call box, or those labour-heavy mornings on which I slit open the post with surgical precision, then analysed the blank spaces for traces of love. Even now, when all language is available at the soft pressure of a lightly curious finger—O, faint o flynyddoedd, for instance, is Welsh for Oh, how many years—everything I want to say is as out of reach as shredded letters, or a photograph that someone must have taken, but which I never saw. O, i fod yn ifanc ac ar goll: Oh, to be young and lost.

Bio: Oz Hardwick