Other Writing

Firstly, Alice disorientates the trousers by smacking out the creases, then she hangs them upside down on the washing line.

Next, she makes hostage of his blue shirts by pinning them down by the shoulders, firmly wedging the peg over the cotton so there is permanent tension in the shoulders. The scent on the garments is all her own making, a fresh fragrance of apples and camomile.

Alice sniffs the air. A storm is coming, just as she thought. The sky has never been bigger, wider, darker.

...

It is summer

But the frost has come

Ghosted my garden

Turned the cobwebs white

Furred leaves

Chilled the place to its roots.

My living room chair,

The side-lamp. Shelves of books.

Shadowy corners.

Like they have just returned

Sit in a place a few inches away

From where they were before.

I shall put myself back in place

Like the spines of my books

Alphabetically,

one rib next to another

To keep me upright.

My body has forgotten its own language. The hypothalamus—that ancient thermostat—misfires like a house with faulty wiring, sending false alarms of danger and heat. Under my skin, magma rises without warning. I think of those nature documentaries: thermal imaging of Yellowstone, the ground that ripples with hidden fire, how the earth's crust can split from forces below.

Each flash begins like a match strike at the base of my spine, climbing upward until my skin becomes a map of drought-cracked...

I eagerly wait for a new day inside my cold cell, even when the sun’s face is ready to give up on me. As usual, the sheets are unhappily twisted around me, hiding imprints from the vigour of my dreams. My secret light pollution. Only I can see them travelling on the train of my life going by, cabin by cabin. On waking, they are water spewing from a hose until it’s cut off mid-stream.

I am thirty. So very thirsty.

Today I imagine myself escaping from a tower. I have grown my hair, and I lower...