DAY TEN: Today I’m grateful for good friends, especially when they lead you to secret gardens.

The British Library reopened this week. It feels like a ghost town inside, but I’m grateful its doors are open.

DAY SEVEN: Rebirth from what I thought was a dead plant. I didn’t inherit my mother’s green thumb, so a lot of my plants end their lives no matter what I do. But this plant surprised me and came back! I’m grateful for small miracles, little reminders that, sometimes, we just need a little time to find our way before we can thrive again.

DAY SIX: I’m grateful scientists around the world have created a vaccine to help end the pandemic. 2021 looks like a promising year.

Day Four: Cemetery walks

Autumn is a farewell song to summer as winter creeps nearer with each turn of the earth. Already I forget the hot sting of sunlight on my skin, the sun-warmed blood pulsing, radiating through patchwork veins, a soothing quietude. Damp skies painted with grey strokes leave a chill in my bones, deep in the marrow where winter’s blood is made with old magic, but somewhere, buried within the blackness of my flesh, a spark of gold lingers, a brief image of summers past with a promise of more to come. There is hope hiding there, in the darkest of times, waiting, like summer’s blazing sun, to rise again and envelop the world with its light.