Gone Fishing
I bounced past the other boy in the bedsit balancing on the balcony. I’d just woken up. He’d been pulling fishing line out of his mouth for sixty-three days now and the floats had just stopped. ‘Not sure how much more I’ve got!’ and he coughed. I couldn’t remember him coughing before. He’d cried a lot. ‘Keep going!’ I shouted. I was about to bounce off. ‘Barracuda, I reckon. Or a whale – jackpot!’
When I came back in the evening he was gone, sixty-three fish left behind in a bucket on the balcony, a fishing reel wound up on the wet floor with a “Return To Sender” sticker on it.
Ashley Dunn is a writer and event organiser based in Bristol, UK. He is the creator of Infringed Poetry and Just Cos! Poetry, two popular poetry nights in Bristol, and he currently manages and hosts the latter. He has been published in A New Ulster in Northern Ireland, plus various publications online. He can be found on Instagram: www.instagram.com/