A slow movement of the eyes before the dizziness of the day is taking over. The clumsy beams of the Sun are rushing into the mirror on the wall and then bouncing back, leaving behind no more than a puddle of light. The birds are finding their melodies they lost during the night, starting the
Tagfiction
I Checked and It Was Still There
“But as they burned, disappearing irrevocably one after the other, you stopped believing that there was any purpose in a book’s existence. Or perhaps the only one to have worked out their purpose was the Sarajevan author and bibliophile who, instead of using expensive firewood, warmed his fingers last winter on the flames of Dostoevsky,
Choice Words
We are at Boots, Etc., exit 149 when driving South in Georgia towards New Orleans. We watch as a man hammers hand-wrought silver tips onto Henry’s new red leather boots. The man uses shining little nails, he squints, he moves his hands as delicately as a pianist, as a mother braiding hair. As he works behind
The Fire That Never Went Out
She sits by the smouldering tarp, kicking a rock with her dusty boot. Cinder and coals smolder perpetually. The sun is stingingly bright. You can taste the heat. She used to go down to the sea, to cool off, to bathe, to feel weightless. She’d go at night with her cousin, Zadi. When the sea
Triangles and Other Geometries
After maybe thirty hours of phone conversations I finally asked him if he was gay. I don’t usually have to ask, either I know or it doesn’t concern me. But this was a man who staged his selfies in historical fashion: Milan in the 70’s, New Orleans in the 30’s, you get the picture. Are
Of Clay and Wattles Made
A great many years ago – or maybe not so long ago – I’ll leave it to you to determine – it was decided, quite against my will, that I would take the Number Fourteen bus to school. The bus was a great beast of a thing. It rattled deafeningly as it struggled over mud-covered
The Last Forest
Except for the light breeze everything is different from all she had ever known. The temperature, the humidity, that she cannot see the horizon, the colors and the way the light dances over the ground. She has never smelled anything like this before, but it is not unpleasant. It comes closest to a combination of heavy wet mud and the youngest grasses. Behind her she could still have seen the familiar blue sky, green water and yellow sand through the trees, in case she had looked back.