SEPTEMBER
The Stink and The Shame
They started rebuilding the sewers the week I left Belfast. Now they were fully underway the smell overpowered everything. Read more →
#TuesdayTales
SEPTEMBER
Returning
I liked the concealed spaces best. Dark recesses behind the screen, the projection booth, the stale air of the poster store. These parts felt more authentic. Read more →
AUGUST
The Thieves and the Toymaker
It was late afternoon, but I hadn't considered my sandwich or swig of juice; instead I tweezed bits of wood from the eye socket of a wooden man. Read more →
AUGUST
Open Studio
A few steps of a staircase filled the entire frame, but the sunlight captured and amplified the wood’s imperfections in a way that fascinated her. Her boss and store owner, Lucy, informed her that the photographer, John Himmermeyer, was a “dear friend” and would be showing his work at Jamaica Plain Open Studios. Read more →
AUGUST
Early to Decay
Her eyes are drawn outside to the only interesting thing to watch—the people passing by, far below, on the bustling sidewalks. Read more →
AUGUST
Clockwatcher
But then he woke up. At 7am, before the alarm went off. He reached over to pre-emptively switch it off. It was dark outside. And it was cold, because it was that time of year. Read more →
AUGUST
Hope Cove
The tide is hours and lifetimes away and the rockpools look like mountains, volcanoes, moon-craters. Seagulls perch on the peaks. The pools contain whole worlds within. Read more →
JULY
Chilly
I’d like you to be nervously brushing the frost off a box with your forefinger and at some point I’d like you to instinctively reach up and use the forefinger to wipe away a tear. Read more →
JULY
Supernova
Her body was renewed and powerful. She felt a shift in her sense of self each morning, as though she becomes a climate of her physicality. Read more →
JULY
One Night Stand
‘I can never remember. When I wake up, I mean. In the dream, I can. It’s always the same one. I know that it rhymes and that there’s something dark about it. And then obviously I’m calling people...' Read more →
JULY
Signs & Symptoms
The sadness of the dream hurts. Its roots are so deep inside me, and the sadness hurts all the more because in the dream I’m wanting you, but, in the dream, you and I never existed for each other, and you don’t know me. Read more →
JUNE
Rabbit
the motorway from Lahore to Pindi is surrounded by hills of red mud. The cliff faces are curved and squat, folded up on themselves like cream that has frozen. Read more →
JUNE
Privation
In America you were a teaching assistant, and you were officially poor. They paid you in biweekly checks, and you know now what a good thing that was. You spent the first on rent and frozen food; with the second you bought happiness at discount stores. Read more →
JUNE
Joe the Barber
No one else came in and I stayed for over an hour. Joe told me about growing up in Korea and struggling when he first came to the United States. It was quite a story and it made me see him in a new light. He was an outsider. In a way we were kindred spirits. At the least he was my barber.
Read more →
JUNE
Rain to Riches
The day the rain came began like all the others. Hot, dry, dusty, with waves of heat shimmering over the asphalt. Read more →
MAY
Communion
We don’t mind eating bread with blood on it. We’re not so high-flying that we can’t eat a little blood. Read more →
MAY
The Year Lilian Quartey Learnt to Pack a Bag
Tega tweeted a picture: a young boy and young girl, both of them holding hands as if on a date...... Read more →
MAY
To the Escott Room
November arrived with commendable punctuality for the forty-ninth time in Leanne Smythe's life. Wordless, the month could only peep when it arrived, and what it produced mimicked the protests of lame beasts: on the night notes, something like a word Read more →
MAY
I Swear
I couldn’t tell anyone because no one would believe me, and I was scared that everyone would think I was bad; I didn’t want to get in trouble.
Everyone loved Mr. Heathslip. Read more →
MAY
Something About Him
It was late when Tee knocked on the door. The man he came home with had his hand on his arm when I answered. They smelled of alcohol and smoke. Read more →