Pallets on a roof, aloof twenty-somethings on their coop-like balconies, bent arms of machinery, many miles from the farms of our ancestry. Messed up love, kissing on the pavement, rolling in kebab, dancing with someone, everyone, in a cramped bar, water dripping from the ceiling on the bartenders head, a roving hand on your…
I’m very hungry. This is a table. Is this a fast train? Why is not moving? It’s moving. Why are we not eating if this is a table? A mother sits on her phone instead of talking to her four-year-old son. I catch the little boy’s eye and he looks fed-up. Like he has…
“Close your eyes, son.” The young man closed his eyes. “Take a deep breath.” The young man did. “You are stood on the walls of our city, our home. Beneath your feet is the bulwark of our people, stone built higher and higher, mortar mixed with the blood and tears of our woman, our children. Our…
(25) Breathless. Artificial air tastes like licked Lego, burned copper, dirty coin hands. My fingers are clenched and my skull throbs with the dull drum beat of a death march, kamikaze, this is the end. Last I remember is the grass, hands tearing on the hard earth, a pain like angry acupuncture. Doctor Remnbaud says…
(24) Kit Lock gets home in the early hours of the morning. Her husband’s shoes are not by the door and his coat is not on the rack. My husband, she thinks. She calls out his name even though it makes no difference and she thinks of calling Christian or Sally but neither of them…
(23) My feet don’t hit the right path, my ankles slip on the curb and the pavement moves like it shouldn’t. Kit’s blunt anger has spread across my body like lichen. The whiskey’s gone. I won’t go home. I won’t go home again. My eyes burn like rubbed-in chilli, I can barely keep them open.…
(22) Kit picks at a plate of cheese and pickles and crab stuffed into pastry balls garnished with brown dill. We are at an apex of a cacophony of second-hand voices and shrill laughter and the hearty crab-stained chuckles of too-old-to-be-trendy insurance brokers make my ear drums sting. There’s a group of four men with…
(21) “I told you to stay here,” Kit says when I come in the door. “I wanted some air.” “You look better,” but when I look in the mirror I know she is lying. She knows I know she’s lying. A lie shared is closer to the truth. “Thanks.” “Do you want to go to…
(20) When I wake Kit is stood over me. “I’m going to work. Stay here, okay? There’s Carbonara in the fridge. Here’s some water and some books to read. Stay here. I will be back as soon as I can. Stay here,” and she kisses me on the forehead and leaves. The second time I…
(19) I open the door. Kit’s sat on the stairs and I know the tears are for me. “Where have you been?” it’s the obvious question, one I’ve prepared for, but I still draw double deuce and she stares at me, “Where have you been?” “Kit I -” “A meeting with an agent. Then what.…
Seal Matches 