July 2011
2 posts
14
I.
In this way, I am able to tell you about the lies: half-lies, good-intentioned lies, lies with no thought in them whatsoever, which were therefore perhaps the most malicious of all.
I am able to tell you about hands, crossed and tangled in any hint of cover, and the story of her hands, to which I applied much imagination: Her hands dark-skinned by the sun, palms softly roughened from...
May 2011
1 post
13
I remember coming down to this house in the midst of winter when the trees were stripped naked and the roads of the city were frozen through. Felt like I’d stepped into a fairytale world, shaped by heroin and wasted dreams, everything broken back to the barest bones. Knee deep in strange language that you’d just see everywhere, tossed around crude and careless, hanging empty upon the...
October 2010
2 posts
12
I smashed a wine glass. I crushed it into my hands. In my hands were blood red grapes. I smeared grape juice under my eyes. It clung to my lashes and made me blind.
11
Some nights, you can imagine that time has stopped for all eternity. Everything is quiet, though from afar you may detect a distant hum, the muted chaos which exists at the borders of any unshakable stillness. The sky has been painted a thin, leering grey, tinged with orange.
Life has been left just as it was - a car parked slightly askew, washing hung on the line, the light left on in an empty...
July 2010
1 post
10
If you were going to walk beside the river as the afternoon came to a close, why would you not first pay a visit to the small church above the shipyard, the church called St. Gluvias, with the red bench in the corner and the black gate set into the rear wall? This summer, the garden and cemetery were most overgrown. I walked the path to the black gate, stooping under branches and spiderwebs. The...
June 2010
2 posts
9
You can’t just fall in love with a slug. That’s what Sara told me, but she was wrong. I met a slug called Beatrice and she had beautiful eyes. She might not’ve been a slug. What’s one of those creatures with a shell and lots of neck? Anyway, Beatrice was the most wonderful person I’d ever met, but she told me she already had a man, a proper gent, a darling, fifty...
8
JOHN was a cosmetic surgeon who specialised in turning old people into young people, and vice versa, but really it was just an illusion, because they were still old (or young) inside.
JOHN fell in love with SANDY. SANDY was his twenty-fifth patient, she had lovely auburn hair and grey eyes. She wanted to look thirty again but JOHN loved her just the way she was. SANDY, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL he told...
May 2010
1 post
7
Vince has steely square glasses. If he ever took them off, I’d flick him in the eye. ‘Hello Vince.’ ‘Hi.’ That was the extent of our enthralling conversation earlier today. I have always found Vince hilarious. There’s something about the name Vince, isn’t there? I could just say it over and over, Vince, Vince, Vince, Vince Vince Vince Vince Vince. It never gets tired....
March 2010
1 post
5
I walked home cursing the pavement. There was little else to curse. Whenever a car sped by, I cursed it, and I even dared to curse a rustling plastic bag after it scared me half to death. The walk home is almost entirely downhill, which is particularly satisfying at 1am, when it feels as though the whole world is your own, and each step that you take is an act of claiming it. I passed McDonalds,...
February 2010
1 post
4
Walking a cold beach in the moonlight, down at Lizard Point, and the sea is breathing softly. Each broken rock is a friend who went ahead, and chose a place to be still. A body that aches, longs for stillness. On the rocks at Lizard Point, my feet are unsteady. The rocks stretch out into the sea, and the sea is quiet. The weight of the sky is like a heavy coat that I long to be rid of. It protects...
January 2010
1 post
3
In a couple of hundred years this town will sink beneath the sea, and fish will eat our bones.
Either that, or there will be a city here instead.
When the sun sets over the bay it falls on a multitude of windows, each one holding as much light as it can, while the surplus sinks into the shadows behind the skyscrapers.
You can’t walk the path through the woods any more; the little church has...
November 2009
2 posts
2
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I said, gently. She threw me back a look like a bucket full of wasps. “No thank you.” I shifted my weight onto one foot and then the other. I tried not to make any noise, or to breathe too loudly.
I thought that the crying had finished, but she pulled out a tissue and held it to her face. She was bent over herself, buckled and twisted. Inside...
1
It is briefly very cold in our house. All of a sudden there is ice everywhere. It would be very unwise to use the stairs, so instead we shout from floor to floor. Everything seems echoey in a cold house. There is steam coming from the bathroom - somebody has left the shower on, and the water smells of burning metal. The floor is starting to crack. We crowd around the shower, but water droplets...