Sticky post
“Because of the widespread belief that there was something not quite correct with wayfaring women, the act of walking became a recognized form of defiance.” — Deborah Lutz, The Brontë Cabinet Continue reading Creative Corner: Weird Sisters and Walking Sticks
This is it. The final connection. You shuffle your orange tickets between your trembling, flaking, ice-cold fingers and brush an unruly wisp of hair behind an exposed ear. A litany of tinny carols reverberates down the platform, and the scattered Christmas lights of reds, pinks, greens, yellows, and blues shudder in the foggy distance, falling casualty to the terrorising wind. You glance up and down … Continue reading Creative Corner: The Last Train Home
My mind is a house partway through renovation, laid on ancient foundations on an island beneath the sea. I live in the basement, its walls of steal streaked with the iridescent graffiti of imagination, the floor littered with opinions cast aside. My room is my solace — but also my prison; outside the ocean currents rip and claw. Piled high in crooked towers are books … Continue reading A Room
‘How much longer?’ Benji asks. He’s playing on his Switch in the back-seat; the tinny sound effects an accompaniment to Daisy’s strained breathing. ‘Not long, the sat-nav says ten minutes.’ I flit my eyes between the screen and the road, gently turning the steering wheel. ‘A whole ten?’ He groans, shifting about on the leather. ‘Why don’t you put your game away, look out the … Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Field Days Pt.5
Today I felt time in my cells, in little nooks
And under hairs and sitting on a skintag.
I feel the rasp of my sole, and as I step
my toes crackle on the kitchen floor. Continue reading Creative Corner: The Crumple Lady
When you are twelve, you lose interest in the difference between a stag beetle and a dung beetle. It’s not cool to like insects or play in fields anymore. I had started ‘big school’ as Mum promised. I hung out with a group of five boys; we would play football in the playing field after lessons, staining the grey trousers that were ironed for me, … Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Field Days Pt.4
Me and my toenails are staying inside.
As I water my feet, with spiced bubbles,
they grow horned edges
that rasp through my socks and make holes Continue reading Creative Corner: Lil Lockdown Toes
Summer 2005. I was ten. It was two years ago that I had seen the baby fox and their mother. I would sometimes wonder if they were still out there, flashing through the woods. I stomped through the landscape, looking for fun, growing bored of what the countryside of Devon could offer.I was growing restless in the fields and hedgerows, which manifested in a lethargy. … Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Field Days Pt.3
In Devon, I used to embark on several projects in the summer time. Mum and I didn’t have our own garden until years later, so whilst we lived in that terrace house, the slice of terracotta-brick was all we owned. The hills beyond the house became ours too, but we didn’t own them in the same way that we owned the brickwork. The summer of … Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Field Days Part.2
I was the type of child that adults liked. I was polite, timid, and entertained myself. ‘What a lovely young man,’ old women would coo over me, and ‘gosh, isn’t he well behaved,’ fathers would nod, holding back their own snarling boys. At the school gates, at the end of the day, parents would arrive, ready to embrace their children, who were either exhausted or … Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Field Days Part. 1
