She tears up birthday cards into itty bitty pieces. She shreds telephone bills whilst watching television. She makes tiny squares with pinking shears from her bank statements, month after month. She uses a hole puncher to reduce her pay advice slips. She mutilates Christmas cards in January when talking on the phone. She saves her credit card bills for Sunday nights and rips them into swirls. Her store of tattered paper grows slowly under her bed, in the back of the cupboard, in neat boxes behind the sofa. When all the birthdays she will have are over, when all the bills have been paid and all the pay cheques cashed and the bank accounts closed and the last Yule is done, she will throw a quiet party and bask in her life�s confetti.
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