That Day, the Tree
And I watered it in fears. William Blake, ‘A Poison Tree’ Strange, they said. There she goes, whispering of smashed wood, split faces. Going to the oak again? Old Hannah, mad Hannah, who does not look us in the eye. “It
Sconfinata
When I was fourteen, I found a woman in my house. She was father’s secretary, with luminous black hair and a string of pearls around her neck. The tender remembrance of a distant beauty, coupled with an unwavering faith in the grandeur of life, she consumed the better part of my consciousness th
The Nordic Hut
Leaving you, I longed for one lone hut, red against the vast grey sea. Longed to sink my boots into the snow, to seek to spread the net of my spirit. To be more than a sister, a friend, a partner, when that cold courage blustered through me. I have now forgotten your name—or is […]
Thursday Night
Thomas settles into the most lived-in velvet on the train and says that he and Noelle might break up. I acknowledge the information with a nod and lift and lower the ball of my foot on the metro’s rubber flooring. The train’s pretty deserted. Thomas keeps pushing back the time he picks me up.
My Father, the Concert Pianist
The next time I spoke to my father, I was living in London. Months went by fast and slow. Days rustled alongside and fell to the ground. Sometimes I thought about what had happened with him. I didn’t regret what I said, didn’t wish for any form of reconciliation. One afternoon, though, he told m
Trifling
A village fete. Bunting. The air is sticky like marmalade. The scorched grass as crunchy as a brandy snap. Light up on Winnie, seventy-four, blouse the colour of stained wallpaper, standing behind a cake stall. WINNIE: “I don’t use clotted cream.” I knew I’d have to kill her when she sai
La Grande Bouffe
There is no fate worse than dying with a fully stocked wine cellar. He wasn’t sure where he’d read that, or if he had come up with it himself, but he took those words very seriously. As did they all. There were four of them in the dining room of Château de Montbrun: a Butcher, […]
What Remains
A pink scarf he bought that first Christmas together. Not that she ever wore scarves, which was why he’d bought it in the first place, and why he shouldn’t have bothered. (It snowed that January – more sludge than snow, really, the kind that produces muddy, misshapen snowmen – and sh
For a Mourner
If I’m in the right frame of mind, I can still picture the old Whitechapel. Back then, there were no sleek walkways as there are now, and the current, chic, steel arches were made of sandstone brick, darkened by soot and grime. My father lived in the area from when I was seventeen to twenty-four,