Extinctions
The Galápagos Islands, best known as the inspiration for Charles Darwin’s pioneering work on evolution, are home to 103 endemic species not found anywhere else in the world. Such a place presents myriad mysteries and opportunities for scientists. Amongst the overlooked treasures of the archipelag
I got back home on Friday
content warning: abuse, violence, graphic images, homophobic slur, strong language (for Helplines see below) I got back home on Friday and was met with a hug and a slap on the back that was a bit too hard. Just stinging the skin a little. My name exclaimed like I was a welcome sight, somethin
Two women
are wearing high necked jumpers, wrapped up to their chins like coffee cup sleeves. Their spines taut trunks, […]
Keep
I don’t see it as a word anymore spell out every letter enunciate every syllable begging for kinship from a word so distant, like your grandmother’s saris, the one in the pictures where she smiles unaware of being photographed woven in Banaras, home to poverty and colour, eyes wandering from
Desire in Love
I waxed fiction out of reality at a young age, after my father gave me advice for dealing with life’s vicissitudes: “Pretend you’re the protagonist in a story. Create a world around you to make you feel less alone.” When my family moved from Indiana to Texas, I transformed our new town into
Rubber Fire
Horizon catches the cap of our neighbour’s fire oiling gashes through wood floorboards spiked with old plimsolls. The deadliness is in the sunsink behind the flames: in things suspended there is so much space quivering from absence into being. Strange faith. I tap your shoulder to ma
because my mother’s best friend is catholic
today it seems the missionaries are bound to send their best-disguised recruit – the tickle of hair on your top lip better found at the wheel of a Ford F-150, camo drying on the boot, but filters the word of G-d to a tinny sound a frequency between carrie underwood and orchestral flute, cou
Cinema
My grandparents came from a movie-going age – he would call from the office and my grandmother would dress all her children in evening clothes, and wait. At the cinema, the world dissolved into light and sound, the salt of popcorn on your fingertips, and pink soda that fizzed up your nose,
The Lakebed
In a riverless city, the promise of water is enough. My mother and I pin our hopes to each monsoon, and evenings in June that stroll the circumference of our bayou-to-be. Starved of fish, the empty lake harbours cattle, gangs of dogs and cricket games — we see snatches of batsmen thr