Ghosts of Tradition: Past, Present, and Future
I’d never given much thought to tradition before. When I had, I saw it as somewhat redundant – rubbing shoulders with inflexibility, with conservatism – and I assumed that the people around me shared similar views. Tradition didn’t seem like something of particular importance to our
‘And So, My Brother, Hail, and Farewell!’
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. — ‘Lycidas’, Milton One April afternoon in 2020, during the sudden lull of lockdown, I placed a shoebox on my sun-flooded desk. I lifted outa photograph of myself as a toddler, bright-eyed against a dull
Searching for Seashells
When we were much younger, my little sister spent one restless summer searching the shore for starfish. She dug her tiny fingers into the sand, gathering them excitedly in a bucket until they dried up, and then cried over their sorry cracked bodies. The holidays that followed, she took to walking th
The Cabin
We had parked on the road heading west out of town, alongside the railroad tracks. Ahead of us, the dusty streets gave way to pastures, which in turn gave way to wooded mountains, cutting a crisp horizon. Mackenzie lolled out the passenger seat, and Bailey skipped between the car and the road. I wat
boju says
he is now the 2am ambak falling on our tin roof & maybe but i don’t have words for this widow singing for the ghost of her husband still limping around his home of pepper trees […]
Spaces
At Scouts, we would bash the trees and see what little creatures fell out: watch them scramble in plastic ice cream tubs, taking up space only how they are told. Villages are puddles: at my feet I see myself in blue gingham, Nutella smeared at the corners of my mouth, but before I can meet [&helli
Grief and Memory
Last summer, I went to a birthday party for my girlfriend’s two-year-old niece. The whole family was there, blowing out candles, taking pictures, and eating cake. But while they were celebrating life, I was busy thinking about death. In between smiling for photos and making polite conversation
Iphigenia in Jaywick / The Aftermath
I grew up under stained-glass windows, learnt their blues and pomegranate-reds before my mouth figured out how to form words – I was never good with names, but the faces stuck. One stood looking over the pew our family always sat in, Eve and Adam, her hair the same russet-gold as the apple she hel
