The Dictionary of Lost Words

by Pip Williams

‘Me needlework will always be here,’ she said. ‘I see this and I feel … well, I don’t know the word. Like I’ll always be here.’ ‘Permanent,’ I said. ‘And the rest of the time?’ ‘I feel like a dandelion just before the wind blows.’

I often wondered what kind of slip I would be written on if I was a word. Something too long, certainly. Probably the wrong colour. A scrap of paper that didn’t quite fit. I worried that perhaps I would never find my place in the pigeon-holes at all.

‘The Dictionary is a history book, Esme. If it has taught me anything, it is that the way we conceive of things now will most certainly change.

SISTERS Women bonded by a shared political goal; comrades.

The women’s names, so carefully written, would never be set in type. Their words and their names would be lost as soon as I began to forget them.

‘No graduation, of course. No degree. But it’s satisfying to know I would have achieved both if I wore trousers.’

When I arrived at the Radcliffe Infirmary, they told me he was gone. Gone, I thought. It was wholly inadequate.

The Dictionary, like the English language, is a work in progress.