Freddie Halter has a worn sole. His left foot is fine; it follows a path as straight as a railway track. It’s his right one that derails, drawing semicircles in tow, collecting grit and gravel in the worn arches of his boot, as well as the stares from other morning walkers. But it has never once stopped him from making the half-mile trip to collect his soda bread from his favourite piekarnia on th...

The music is his marionette

Dancing under rippling fingers—

Eighty-eight plus him

Somehow make infinity.

A celestial intelligence moves him

So that his fingers know before he

Where they should land.

He is immersed,

Ensconced by melody,

Suspended in space,

When something takes flight

And his aura is shot with colour:

Golds, emeralds, amethysts, and rubies

Glittering with a vibrancy unseen.

Is t...

The stranger in the street

Was last night my friend.

After untensing

And splaying, backs-to-sheet,

We guarded nothing;

Laid bare our uncovered bodies

And uncloseted skeletons,

Chests damp and glistening

In dawn’s raw light.

I remember well

Beyond those walls

The drone of distant siren,

The city’s pulse,

The anxious bustle of man lost in an endless soul-search, playing the unwinnable game of dre...

Fingerlings’ tips fissure and rust,

Their ageing grip grows weak,

Riots of russet flutter and streak

Earthbound, crumpling to dust.

Suspended in air, a sulphur must,

The bang of gunpowder and its reek,

Dyeing nightskies into Javan batik,

Swilled and rolled by November gust.

But she of blanching breath and bite

Births sunspots in redemptive sigh:

Imbued with scent of honey-sweet spice,

Fire-war...

Violence blooms in violet plumes

As static charge from soft of palms

Swells and swirls and dances forth,

A skittering stone across a lake,

Its touch a kiss of scorch and char,

Marring plains to blackened dust.

In her smirk, a scheme unleashed;

Lilac ghostly breaths take form,

Of paw and snout and snarled fur,

A famished beast bounds forth.

It seeks out prey to quell its ire,

And snuff her sou...

The message was delivered on horseback, in snatched breaths and rushed words.

“My lady…we need you…arrow strike.”

Sirona was at her writing desk. She paused, ink pooling at the tip of her quill, a black-blotched full stop cutting short her letter. Her gaze lifted and landed on the paisley swirls of mist at the foot of the forest.

“I will come right away.” This letter could wait.

A twitch of ...

Joy has no opposite—

She is the purity of presence,

A knowing,

The thrill of aliveness.

She is not chased or captured,

But turns up unannounced,

Like a long-loved-and-lost friend,

Except, on closer inspection,

With a flooding warmth, you realise

That friend is you.

She is that stilled gaze

Holding you at arm’s length:

Admiration,

A sweet outbreath,

An unwinding,

Wind-thrown leaves coming to res...

When Viola was tasked with preparing a cash flow statement for one of Haines Watts' biggest clients, she breezed through the figures, unperturbed, in two February afternoons, which was most unusual. An account that size should normally take weeks. She'd never once muddled her numbers.

At least, not yet.

But when director, Darren, called her to his office, suddenly that tuna sandwich and third ...

Who are you?

Look at you…that thick brushstroke of grease over your brow, trailing down the hook of your nose; those fat, rheumy lids that weep fluid after a night’s unrest; and—oh gosh—what is that? Pits. No, craters, plugged with half-popped grains of salt and cracked black peppercorns, bubbling from the dermis.

Squeeze one, go on.

I want to see the crud and dirt sprout and sprawled, like ...

Whenever James needed a moment to himself, he would always come back to this same place. Tonight the air was draughty, the faintest pinch of autumn stirring. He flipped up his hood and pulled on the drawstrings until only his nose poked through.

He listened.

The floorboards creaked underfoot and there was a tinkle of curious carp ruffling the skin of the lake. He drew esses in the water with h...