sage-and-silver

The old house stands lonely and forlorn. The FOR SALE sign on the once-perfect lawn slants to one side. She was once a grand lady, home to many families. She wasn't always like this: once she was filled with late-night parties and butterflies and clocks. Before, the sunlight would spill through the shutters, pooling on the grand staircase. The mother would be upstairs, dusting her face with powders and colours while her husband idled importantly in-between business calls. Occasionally the mother would glance down, over the ivy-covered walls, to where her dark-eyed son sang nonsense rhymes to butterflies. She would be drawn back to her reflec

What do you do when the wind is ripping the skies apart? How can you breathe when the lightning has set the air aflame? Where is your power now, as the currents tear at the contours of your cemented triumph over nature? i. You stand there, cloaked by a darkness you cannot light with those trembling splendours of flame, and you are helpless. I can see how it makes you shiver, my darling, seeing how wild your kingdom truly is. I told you this would happen, I warned you. You cannot insult what you cannot tame, or control the things which control you. Oh, my love, it hurts me to see how this scares you. I can do nothing, only smooth icy hands o

I'm standing on the edge here, counting the breaths until I am released. I can feel it in my bones, an excitement that swirls upwards through me, shaking me, rattling me, until I am trembling in its grasp. With every tremour, I am closer to that edge, with every breath, the ground is disappearing. This precipice whirls closer and closer, and I cannot stop it (nor do I want to) unless I stop breathing, stop being, stop remembering. (for to be is to remember, surely?) Beneath my toes, beneath the woven dirt, there are a thousand tightly-packed remembrances. Each one is solid and whole and beautiful, and some will eddy up insid

Yesterday shattered as I opened my eyes, splintering into a feeling of warmth and happiness. But now I am shivering, like I have bitten ice, tremours that toss the spindle of my consciousness into a childlike fear. Today will not be a good day, I know it. There will be decisions, important decisions, to make, and I will have to make them. I will have to act sure of them, as if I understand what I am doing to my future. I will have to clench my fists and walk in there, and hope that the words I hold on my tongue have not dissolved in my uncertainty. I will have to suck in the air, pull myself together, feel my nerves and bones

Their limbs are long and sleek, but if you get close enough, you will see the goosebumps pricking their skin. They stand inline, shadows inked onto their faces as they pretend to be older. They toss carefully-ruffled hair over angled shoulders, pretending indifference, fake IDs simmering in their pockets. If only their parents knew they were here; private school girls longing for the feel of grime and sweat on their skin. Somewhere close by, but a world away, the other girls are curled into comma shapes on their couches, envious and scared of those other girls who strut on heels and smell of smoke. Wrapped in their cocoons of safe home life

She breathes in oxygen, and breathes out silence. There are words on her tongue, coating her mouth in dust and ashes. She wants to spit them out, scream them into his ears, have them crash and collide onto his skin, filling his pores with their sound. But she cannot say the words. She turns away - once again- hoping the angle of her body, the hollowness of her eyes, will betray what she feels. She hates those shimmering touches, the slip and slide of his hands on her skin, His fingers on her waist, his palm on her stomach -where she one day wants to have a comma-shaped life growing inside her- She hates his low, th

Alexander's life changed when he walked through the door. It wasn't a particularly remarkable door. It wasn't very big, or very wide, or indeed, leading to an interesting place. The only remarkable thing about this door, is that the space in  between  that place and the previous place, was hollow. And if you held your breath as you stepped between, the shadows would begin to fray, and you would feel your senses melting into what wasn't there. Your stomach would give a strange lurch, and your throat would feel tight and cold. Alexander did exactly that. He held his breath, and stretched out his senses until they disappeared. And then he fel