Nesoterica knew she was going to die that night. She could feel it. The way the curtains trembled even though the window was shut.

She hugged her knees in bed, staring at the sliver of shadow beneath the frame. She’d been terrified of it for years. Every child is, but Nesoterica had proof. Once, when she was six, she swore she saw a claw. Not a hand. A claw. Her mother had laughed, her father...

Shadows stretch too long,

Whispers move where none should breathe

Night forgets the stars....

It’s nice to be the one leaving, thought Clara, the garden’s frost still biting her nose as she pulled the gate shut. The latch clinked shut like a small verdict, sharp and final. Behind her, the house crouched with its low roof and damp bricks, as if it wanted to draw her back inside, but she didn’t look round. She would not.

The cold wind ran straight over the hedges and through her thin coat, ...

The iron hissed like a aluminium and plastic dragon, spitting hot gobbets of steam against the cotton battlefield. My pulse quickened. This was it. The moment I’d been waiting for all day.

I laid the shirt flat on the board, every wrinkle a challenge, every crease an line daring me to strike it down. The fabric trembled beneath my hands. It knew what was coming. I pressed the hot steel down, and ...

A whisper hammers at the lock of trust,

It files your small missteps under ledgered sin;

It lights a cigarette with someone’s blush,

And trades your silence for the secret’s skin.

It walks on careful coins of fear and shame,

Maps every crooked corner of your grief,

Then folds your dignity into a frame

And sells the shadow back for brief relief.

But threats are brittle things, a brittle art:

They...

Clay between my palms,

shaping silence into form,

lines of care remain

a vessel holds memory

as well as quaffings of wine....

Jenna’s love life was a tangle of dead plants… once promising, now wilted in browning silence. She complained, sighed, and eventually resigned herself to loneliness. Then Claire intervened. With the ruthless efficiency of a general and the warmth of an older sister, she deleted the “maybe” men, rewrote Jenna’s dating profile, and shoved her into a decent frock. “You’re not broken,” Claire declared...

And so here we are at the end.

Not the end, of course. The world doesn’t do tidy endings. The world prefers loose threads, dangling questions, and the faint suspicion that your hat has just winked at you.

Proper endings are for books, plays, and fairy tales. The universe, on the other hand, runs on in exactly the same way it always has: slightly tilted, making strange noises, and occasionally...

The sea was flat and grey. The sun had not risen yet. I walked down to the harbour where the boats were tied in a long line, their hulls knocking lightly against the pilings. A man smoked a cigarette on the pier. He nodded to me but said nothing. I carried my bag and kept on.

I’d been up all night. The room had been unbearable in the heat and I couldn’t sleep. And I’d drunk too much wine. The bot...

A world full of roses

the air heavy with bloom,

petals soft as silence,

thorns hint at doom.

Every path is fragrant,

every hand is warned....