Poignant

  • When The Tide Turns

    I want to run from the back exit of the nursing home to the car park, but all Evelyn can manage is a crab-like shuffle. Her wheezing giggles don’t help. “We’ll be seen for sure,” I tell her. “No, we won’t,” she says, her voice muffled by the mask connected to the portable oxygen tank…

  • Floating

    Yesterday was leaking so I shrouded my share in a lip-blue binbag and hauled it out to the road. Mum agreed to dispose of her share too. I tied the bags tight, sealing the airway, and the dripping stopped for a while. Mum helped me load the wheelie-bin and we waited for the rubbish men…

  • Bikini

    She was standing in the rain in a jungle print bikini, relishing the whipping of the wind round her bare torso, her face uplifted to the stair-rod pummelling. A small group of people had gathered round her, fewer than there would have been but for the storm, some laughing, some trying to encourage her to…

  • The Plughole Picker

    Maya pulled the tangle of hairs from the shower plughole. Long black ones clung on like greedy tapeworms but the blonde ones gave in quickly. The red ones were often quarrelsome but this morning they cooperated. She stood up and marvelled at the knot of hair colours glowing in the bathroom’s fluorescent light. Then she…

  • The Reed’s Lament

    Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. Since I was cut from the reed bed, I have made this crying sound.   Jallaludin Rumi   I had loved you forever it seemed. Your glorious name was music, your dark liquid eyes a miracle, and the soft velvet of your flesh my home…

  • Fires of Autumn

    Phoebe loves the smell of autumn; the dying sweetness of overripe fruits and the crispiness of fallen leaves. She stands on the terrace, barefoot, the marble silky cold under her soles. The sun is setting behind the mountains, bathing the landscape in light. Below the terrace, the garden seems ablaze, pebbles burning white and the…

  • Mam and She Worries

    Mam worries ‘bout stuff. Smallest things sometimes. Like when Mrs Kinnear was having her baby and she was rushed to the daytime hospital and no-one had opened the curtains on Mrs Kinnear’s windows. ‘You keep curtains closed when someone’s dead, not when they’s more alive than they’s ever been b’fore.’ I was sent over to…