Syd bumps. Syd gets bump notes.  Lots. Four a week, most weeks. Syd had three on the same Wednesday last term.  “Record breaker!”  Everyone smiles.  Syd can’t remember why he…

The sky is so green today, greener than it’s been for a long time. The sun bakes the earth hot and hard beneath our bare feet, while reptiles scuttle through…

When Blake died, I saw his soul emerge from his body. At least, that’s what I assume it was. He took a final breath, a laboured drawing in of air, and…

I flip my dampened pillow and stretch my arms, the bed too wide for one. Through the window, starlings punch the sky in a liquid mass. A blood-orange sunset edges…

[CW: Grief] “Strictly speaking, water doesn’t belong to the rivers or the oceans. It belongs to the mountains from which it ran.” She nods. She knows this but a brain…

No silver bells for pretty maids in my eyrie of iron-tongued giants. I was molded in their humped likeness, but my voice was a broken clapper, a tortoise’s lurching cough;…

The Royal College of Music, a mile from your house, requests to keep windows closed to reduce sound transmission during the mourning period, for their Patron, Her Majesty the Queen;…

My breath is jagged, but we can’t stop now. This beaut of a coastline stretches before us, there’s miles left to be explored. The ocean’s a sorceress, she conjures up…

To begin with, nobody noticed the pattern. They only noticed that their kids, their older kids, were going missing at an alarming rate. Everyone was alarmed but the parents with…

Dr Martinelli sits behind his desk, stiff as a new-ironed soldier guarding a barricade. She sits, facing the man who isn’t a proper doctor, to her husband’s left, as always.…

You were my first crush. With your long hair and olive glow. Exotic. Not like the fen boys in class with their shaven heads and acne. I looked for you…

Imagine this. You are wandering without maps in the dark forest as twilight creeps in. You are sinking in the snow of a Siberian wasteland. You are drowning in an…