Dormitory
Vogel frequently lies down. He listens to the other deposits of sound in his building spring to life and exhaust themselves. If there were often pockets of momentary turmoil erupting here and there – in the corridors or the plumbing – they go out too soon to take permanent shape. When alone, and
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
There isn’t a difference between a body and a daughter
It started with a white morning like a blind eyeball, the blankest of sleeps. And it started with sickness: Hanna wasn’t there. She was old, she was going deaf, and she wasn’t well enough to face the freezing mornings in the clothes bank, with the women who became desperate as they waited, who t
Amber Means Wait
The sparrows had nested in a traffic light. They selected the orange filter, periodically warming themselves against the bulb whenever the light changed from green to red, or back again. When I first noticed them, crossing the road on my commute home, they looked like the end scene of a Looney Tunes
Under His Skin
I don’t think he knows I’m here, embedded in his dermis. We ended things in a typical rage: “God, you get under my skin!” And I said what now seems to me the line which sealed my fate: “You’d be so lucky!” And, the next morning, I came to, and there I was. Don’t get […]
Marmalade
It came as a shock to learn that Barbara was still alive inside the marmalade. The sight of the oranges had brought back the memory of her. She appeared as an embryo suspended in jelly – the incarnation of a rumination, preserved in vitro. I knew it was her because of the slightly crooked spine, [
Somewhere in Düsseltal
The young woman pays Frau Manuela Grobbel the 200€ deposit. Well, she follows Frau Grobbel through the house with the money scrunched in her hands like a Monopoly player about to pass GO. Her name is Ebba. After paying the deposit, she receives a ring with two scratched silver keys. One is for the
Short Fiction
The stone path stretched away around the sun-bleached rocks and out of sight. Scanning her eyes further up towards the Cloud Rock of La Cumbre, she could spy grey horizontal streaks and bobbing pips along the oblique route to Roque Nublo, betraying walkers making their slow journey. It was the symbo
China and Clay
It was the morning of Christmas Eve – never a big deal in their part of Calcutta – when Putul came in with her mother in a hand-me-down jumper. The Mistress of the Mansion was awake, sweeping the dead leaves in the garden towards the southern wall. She never truly honoured her title, which irked
