I have an image of a little girl running through a rose garden, giggles and her ponytail flowing out behind her, an occasional glance back in glee, an unspoken “are you getting this?”

An older version, the scene now set at night, head thrown back in laughter, ducking this way and that through a tall hedge maze, some fabulous strain of classical music, or possibly jazz, piping round the corners.

Caught, finally, by that dashingly handsome man, intertwining bodies as tightly knit as the branches they’re leaning back into. It’s not a first kiss anymore, but it can be the first of this - the first and last, we will never step in this moment again.

We are beautiful because we are doomed, a burst of flame that will, inevitably, at some point be extinguished. Can we love because we are ephemeral, not in spite of it? This human dance, too short, death a chance to jump into another perspective, spin the wheel again. We are never more exquisite than when the end is near.

“I was young until yesterday” said an old man once, nearing a century of living, and may that be my mantra. “I was young until yesterday”, never more alive than in the company of decay.

The light is dying, let’s dance