Trickle of plasma ( Read more... )

it felt like trying to fold the sky into soft squares. I wanted to give them to my friends - endless grey boxes full of words. I didn't want to make the first fold, the first incision, to commit to anything. Five pale blooms lie crumpled in the bin. I made them out of grey sugar paper.

Even the bald sky crouched down ( Read more... )

I named my dolls after you Peter. They were not fancy prom queen dolls done up their ludicrous lengths with ruffles and bows and velveteen ball gowns. Neither were they famished-looking plastic gamines riding around on pink motorbikes whilst they waited to go on dates with their muscular boyfriends. Rather, they were odd little patchwork creatures ( Read more... )

Frazzled from the night’s hardness she shook out her hair and tormented it with fingers. The cut glass bowl smeary in the cold light grinned lopsidedly with bananas, apples, pears. You weren’t supposed to put bananas with other fruit it spoiled them, made them unfit to eat but she had simply watched them rot to speckled brown. Breakfast always ( Read more... )

Vladimir’s Christmas Coat ( Read more... )

The day my jellies thickened into cells ( Read more... )

My father's fishing boat was barely big enough for two. He sailed each day alone. What bliss to drift solitary among the whispering sea. I missed him so much on those long winter days. He rose like a stalactite in the blackest hour, leaving my mother and I in the grey light ( Read more... )

i slopped a little soup into my tray. instinct made me quickly right the bowl. just a flick of the wrist to ballast the volatile liquid. for the sake of a few drops of soup my new books lay sodden and brown amongst the shattered china.

there are only 13 days left here and i was sad that we would miss the green afternoon light that soothed us so in the beginning. then at last the blossom fell like scales and tiny green curls spread outward. we will miss the thickest time when light is filtered in through a canopy of leaves, but though they are a paler version, our last afternoons ( Read more... )