Hush, he says with his eyes closed, I want to be a pencil.
I hold my breath and wait for a pencil transformation.
No, he says despondently after several minutes of silence. It’s not happening. He turns his face back into the pillow.

Now that the sun’s up when I crawl out of bed I no longer get dressed in the dark, stepping on the end of plugs. Mirrors present unwelcome shocks. I worry the wind will change and my mascara face stick like that, for ever. It gets to around 10am before I realise this is an [...]

I’m picking my way through snippets of someone else’s life, left between pages of books, old books, read books passed down and swapped and bought for pennies at an old charity shop at the bottom of a street and given to me today in a heavy Waterstones bag, ripping at the seams.
In between chai lattes [...]

bomb
purple
splatter
paint
pear
naked
I tried to force these words into coherence and strict punctuation. But it is not happening. My. full-stop. key. has a mind of its own …>>>…
These words are there mainly to remind me of why
three hours sleep
spaghetti carbonara
silhouettes
raincoats
are bad things.
If I had a more vivid imagination…
(my sentences should not be allowed to die such premature, [...]

My wrist, when I lick it, tastes of chlorine.
In between Primo Levi throwing me into a Friday funk and my daydreams of cold hard tiles and the dripping of a tap, that excitement of being seen, heard, found, and a hand-dryer pushing into my back, I think maybe I am a Sim. It is comforting [...]

It exists, however adamantly you try to argue against.
Between the unlit match and the untouched cigarette, lying horizontal at opposite sides of the bed with their heads resting on respective pillows. Pristine pale pink sheets pulled up to chins.
A spark.
The flip of a cigarette case and ten minutes later, sheets crumpled around the two. To [...]

Robert? I ask. I have been looking for him for what feels like years. I am fazed by the house I find myself in the parlour of. It is small and narrow, and I feel like an uncomfortably enlarged Alice. I want to leave, but stopping me is this overpowering need to find Robert. He [...]

You’re the lucky one, so I’ve been told. Skipping over the moor, rocks and moss flashing past under your cons, a glint of setting sun reflecting from your eyes. You’re lucky and you know it, clapping and stamping so the whole world hears, though there’s no-one here listening other than the thrush in the [...]

I’d been there for a good half an hour, wrapped up in a striped blue fleece, hands molded around a steaming mug of dubious berry infusion tea, before the glaring white bathroom light of the adjacent house flickered on once, twice. I was sitting, abject and dejected, under the slant of the roof, deep into [...]

In the darkest corners of my mind, hanging upside down from money trees, hissed miniature meercats. An elephant flew past at high speed, and executed a crash-landing into the parched, dusty soil. A heatwave struck with timely precision, and at that same precise time little flakey flocks of snow drifted skyward.
A grouchy leprechaun crouched on [...]