Extended Magic Cat Metaphor Once you disassemble it it’s all fucked up. Turns out just despair held it together. Blinky the magic cat laid sweets — paper-wrapped, coloured or  plain, familiar or unknown like eggs for years, then one day Blinky broke:...

      Panning His gardening cleats punctured her left knee when she stumbled at his feet in a sack race. There was talk of tetanus. In the holidays she pretended to be his nurse. She made sandwiches when he’d just eaten. In case he had forgotten his...

      On Sighting a Truck Named after a Planet The van at the end of my road has a name: Saturn Removals. I like the sound of that. No fancy intros. The driver steps out, straight down to business. He’s bigger than I expect and the ice-rings that circle...

      Tearing i.m. Rose Strowman what a thrill for a kid    running up the staircase he’s climbed a thousand times before and seeing the wardrobe    for the first time not as a boring white object     but as a newfound treasure trove    because    this...

    Our Bedroom There in the bed, like dirt or blood, someone else lay, not sure who.  They smelt like apricot and drove us wild.  We all twisted in the duvet and rolled up tight like a burrito.  Sweating and swearing, knotted up all angry-like, dirty white...

      Alternates after Pessoa Do you remember that film where there are multiple suns, or was it moons, or both; and that other film where the guy can’t escape this one day, waking up to the same song, same radio news, I would have been like ‘oh,...

      Proofreading the Motorbike Manual I’m struggling to understand the meaning of float pivot pin, centrifugal filter, whether values or valves fits the context, when there’s the familiar sound of your impromptu knock and running to open the door...

      Light at the edge of the world It takes both of us to pull the door open before I follow her up to the light room, climbing what appears to be a thousand spiral steps. At the top, leaning on a bent rail worn by old hands, I am breathing hard, like...