Platform 2
stiletto snaps sharp on concrete, ankle caves in with a wet twist of pain. platform 2, breathless and running late for the six forty-five to London, the dawn cold slicing through bones. her lips crack audibly in the frost, Marlboro smoke curling warm and bitter around a flushed face shadowed by a sheepskin hat, arms
Your Last Orbit
did you just die. I can’t hear those wings anymore. that beating gone silent. you were bashing your skull against the IKEA lamp I got last week. a circle of white light pulling you into the tin shade, electric heat. I sat here at the typewriter, sick with the flu, fingers hitting the keys. listening
The Dead Letter
that summer morning arrived hot and sticky, the air thick and close, bright sun blasting through the kitchen window while the girls tore around the place scribbling homework frantic, yanking plimsolls from under beds, hunting lunch boxes, stuffing in raisins and cucumber slices and little yoghurt tubs – all that packed-lunch madness before the school
First Frost
there were these two kids on a winter bench. one reading Brontë, a face still damp from a summer that wouldn’t quit, braces glinting under the grey sky. next to him, the other one, cheeks whipped red by the frost, jaw set hard. a boy already half-armoured. they kept stealing looks, trying to stuff the