Portokalia
“out of nothing I have created a strange new universe” – János Bolyai We were left an orange, sunset-blotted, not the golden apple we forgot. We were left a portokalia, when we stopped seeing, piles of leaves and mounds of mud gathered around the garden under our feet. We were left lost l
Bridging the Gap
For most of us, pharmaceuticals are a product to be consumed like any other. In the rush of everyday life, we are not expected to consider how the drug was developed, how the molecules are interacting, or how the proteins are bound. We experience the physical effects with little thought as to how th
Paraiso
“Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.” Philip Larkin On Tanjong Rhu Road, it is hard to know where the water begins. Geriatric taxi drivers will tell you that the tarmac you’re travelling on used to be jetty, and the tarmac up ahead a sticky pocket of bay where rotting wood and bilge wat
Basic Space
Editor’s Note: Basic Space is the runner up of the Hilary 2020 500 Words Competition. Judge Natalie Haynes writes regarding the piece that it “shows enormous potential and is probably the best piece of writing at a sentence-level”. “Psychoanalysis is about what two people can sa
Dreaming
Editors’ Note: Dreaming is the winner of the Hilary 2020 500 Words Competition. Judge Natalie Haynes writes that the piece “combines a wonderful clarity and a capacity to illuminate an ordinary scenario: the imagination has created something incisive, emotional and warm.” Tonight
Stockholm Syndrome
we captured the city / persuaded the morning to wait / not to dawn / or betray us / or tread on our shadows just yet now we are alone / but entrapped is a bat in the net of your wings / these have managed somehow to regenerate we captured the towers / […]
Unwitnessed Extinction
One December afternoon in 2017, Hernán Bedoya was riding his horse to the vet in Chocó, Colombia when two men on motorcycles rode up to him and shot him fifteen times. Bedoya, who was a life-long community leader and land rights activist, was allegedly assassinated by a far-right paramilitary grou
Dialogue
It’s easy enough to get in-between things, easy enough to see you sway in the library corridor between your shadow and the rainy window I sway in the library corridor between my shadow and the rainy window, when it comes up in a quiet moment, the current hitting the backs of my knees and you’re
In Conversation with Sarah Mardini
“The boat started taking in water and the engine turned off. The boat was just a little dinghy. I jumped in the water, and my sister joined me; we had to use all the swimming resources that we had. It was a very rough sea that day. But I’m a long-distance swimmer, and I knew I could […]