SEPTEMEBER 2025

Noor closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to remember the warmth of her father’s study, the scent of ink and jasmine drifting through the open window. But the memory was a fragile refuge, offering no shield against the cold of Dachau.

SEPTEMBER 2025

Behind her, watching the lace of her skirt sashay, was that brain dead boxer, hog-tied and gagged, the uptown amateur all washed up before he’d even hit his prime. 

AUGUST 2025

The feel of her hands in his hair was a kind of warm magic. A spell he never wanted to end. 

AUGUST 2025

He espies a centipede tunneling inside the dirt, making way for the water and nutrients to reach a dormant seed in the earth’s womb, which puffs up, quieting those who prophesy its stale, living world will never burgeon.

JULY 2025

Clayton had told him where he could shove his wrath of God nonsense during the reverend’s hour-long attempt to steer him onto the straight and narrow after his clandestine joyride in the neighbor’s truck.

JULY 2025

The sun hung low in the sky, a yolk bleeding gold and orange onto the corrugated roofs of our compound. The air smelled of ripe mangoes and distant charcoal smoke, heavy with the languor of a typical afternoon.

JULY 2025

The bay window has half a dozen panes with glass circles, like something out of Dickens. A bell jingle-jangles as I step inside. The walls are thick with tiny cards in a copperplate hand, while embroidered pennants hang from the bumpy-head beams of the ceiling, advising that...

JUNE 2025

I sit on the bed and observe my husband, bent over his work, eyelashes fluttering in the dim light. His demeanor is boyish, a reflection of the childhood friend I once raced along the quays of Dublin Bay.

JUNE 2025

The purpose of the field is still a mystery. A single structure stands nearer my side, pitched roof and boarded doors and dilapidation encroaching, and I still don’t know what it ever was. 

JUNE 2025

Is this ‘harvest moon’ one of those things where rebels meet behind a barn and plan an act of subversion or something?

MAY 2025

The drifter’s hands smelled of alcohol and cheap cigarettes, and for a long while, the mutt would associate this aroma with the ragged man’s essence. Together they would face the hardships of the contemporary world as an inseparable duo. 

MAY 2025

I don’t watch pornography. I don’t read it either. That doesn’t make me a prude. Sex is simply low on my list of interests.

I wonder how much of that can be blamed on my husband?

MAY 2025

The night before the joyous event, Isabelle lay in the dark, mouthing the vows Hilda had written for her. Worse. Poorer. Sickness. Obey. Isabelle’s grandmothers, aunts and cousins had all made these pledges, and now it was her turn.

APRIL 2025

I’ll tell you the things I remember, then you can show me the things I don’t. How does that sound?

APRIL 2025

Never made it beyond captain. Spent all those years in the Marines and that’s as far as he got. Kinda tells you something.