After her husband, Bryan, calls her toxic and walks out for good, Crystal cleans. She dumps stacks of his mail and papers into a huge black trash bag, including his car registration, the one two weeks ago he claimed she’d thrown out. His accusation had kept her from sleeping and at 2 a.m., she’d risen …
Make the paper by hand, sieving the pulp between mesh, hang to dry. When it accepts the ink, transcribe the poem you wrote to declare your feelings as you started courting. Look for a T-shirt – something that reflects you both – but you can’t settle on just one in-joke. Buy an e-gifted sheep for …
Today is Mina’s first day on the new job. She takes more than usual in the shower, lathering and scrubbing, applying berry-scented shaving cream over parts of her body. She follows carefully with a sharp pink razor that leaves smooth bare strips on her armpits, legs, and crotch. She ponders how the head of the …
The man who sits all day in the hot afternoon sun can only see out of one eye. Covered by a thick and egg-white ooze, the eye moves, and the film moves along with it, as he shifts his gaze. When he looks at you, it‘s hard to look back. He fidgets, his hands shake …
It’s unusual to get a table seat to yourself at rush hour. Maybe this is the good omen I’ve been seeking since I got up this morning. This particular day has been so long coming I expected to be more prepared. But I found myself stalling as I got ready to leave. Mouthwash completed …
I rub my finger over your hand as you stare blankly downwards. Your skin is much rougher now than it used to be, mottled and calloused. I frown as I examine the folds in your palm. I can still see, faded now, the slash right across the heart line where you cut yourself wide open …
Alice stares out of the window and lets the blackout curtain embrace her, as heavy on her shoulders as her familiar school duffle coat. It traps the draughts fingering their way around the frost-laced panes and muffles the steady drone of Phyllis humming We Three Kings in the parlour. Snow soft as goose down tumbles …
The wind is changing. Early morning traffic spurts like water from a stuttering tap. I have no memory of sleep, but the dream threads tell me otherwise. When you left for work, for the day’s soft drift, you seemed so far from yourself. Outside, early morning traffic spurts across the junction like water under pressure. …
Foam spatters Great Uncle Ben’s folded-up trouser hems as he splashes towards us through the shallow wavelets. Shell grains glitter his marbled feet. The receding tide washes over his footprints with salt water and he lopes close enough to shout to my Grandpa Joe, who is busy sculpting a turret on his own sandcastle. Ben …
Torn, from scissors on the umbilical cord, from nails without scratch mittens, gums cut from teeth breaking through, forehead and nose grazes from learning-to-walk bumps and falls, and on knees and hands from running, in lungs from whooping cough, from falling off swings and slides, and a broken playground witch’s hat, the housing estate half-built …
My brothers lifted up the mattress on my bed and weaselled in my hairbrush, a couple of hard plastic baby dolls, three Enid Blyton books, Dad’s metal ashtray and discarded pipe, an empty bottle of PLJ, Mum’s summer sling-backs and pot of Nivea, the family bible, grandpa’s pewter tankard, my five year diary, a toasting …
Jake Mathews was the king of the trailer park. 19, good-looking, charming, always knew what pretty words to say to the young girls. He liked the power he had, the ability to control those girls with a wicked smile or a flash of his blue eyes or flip of his long hair. Those same girls …