Sheet Music by Ruth Brandt
Eddie lies beneath the grand piano. From above him Mother’s notes tinkle down like ice droplets, each one vibrating a tiny tuning fork against his face and setting up a resonance inside…
Eddie lies beneath the grand piano. From above him Mother’s notes tinkle down like ice droplets, each one vibrating a tiny tuning fork against his face and setting up a resonance inside…
A thousand years ago, now, and a thousand years from now, I lived, live, and will live. In a stone cottage on the bank of a hill, I stand in doorways and…
You suggested it at the away day back in Summer, the midst of the heat wave, when to think of wool seemed an act of pure masochism. Stu claimed the idea as…
He waits in the hallway. Around six, when I open the door, he greets me by throwing himself at me, shaking and quivering with happiness. Hello boy, I say, my voice making…
The cloying perfume from a candle eclipses the harsh smell of the paraffin heater. There’s barely enough light, and I blink a few times to allow my sight to adjust. It’s oppressively…
I stopped talking at the dining table on a Monday in 1985; it was our fifth wedding anniversary. I remember the rain lashed against the apartment windows. The windows were open and…
Maya sits like a fruit packed for shipping between a Man With an Unfortunate Goatee and a Youth Who Doesn’t Like You And What You Stand For. The 7:35 and the 8:04…
The lighthouse keeper has been spying on us because he has nothing better to do. He balances on rocks wet as seal backs, his trousers lined from knee to ankle, and we…
‘It’s very simple,’ he says gently. ‘Imagine I lend you ten pounds. I create an account for you here.’ He draws a column and writes her name over it, how lovingly she…
The pool is a wet kimono. As I dive in, its shiveringly intoxicating liquid touch folds around my body. One length and I’m warm. Two lengths, the water fits me like a…
It must have caught her just right, that forking bolt that found Vanessa jogging in a sun shower. She’d been darkly aware of something following, not unlike the occasional male jogger whose…
‘Premium bonds!’ she said to her husband as he quietly prepared the sprouts, his head bowed. ‘They know he doesn’t have any other close relatives, but all the same, your brothers both…