I don’t remember the first time I was frightened. Perhaps, if I thought about it longer, I might vaguely recollect a childhood memory of the dark or an unfamiliar face. But there’s still no way of knowing if that was the first.
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Perhaps what these traditional crafts offer us is not only a chance to slow down, but to subtly rebel against a destructive culture of overconsumption. When it takes weeks - if not months - to craft a new item, that item becomes much more valuable.
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Dining tables and chairs means sitting beside someone you care about and dragging your chair to sit a bit closer. Soon tangled wooden legs represent closeness and nearness, symbolising lovers' desire for a place in each other's hearts.
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There is a hatred that festers under your skin, so visceral and primal, a contempt for yourself that you dare not speak aloud. The hatred burns, scorching flames peeling away at your skin. The fire does not rebirth you; you are no phoenix.
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Lucia looked at her plate in silence. She never stood up for herself when he screamed at her. Feelings were constantly bottling up inside her. Her sense of inadequacy would tighten around her throat like a rope.
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To think this all comes from the birds that have been grounded, rather than the many that still fly ahead. Those moments where the temporality of everything starts to slow down, and you start to think about things like this.
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Does it not sound wrong? The term mixed race. It suggests that we have been placed into an ethnic blender, that we are not part of one species, but we have been diluted or changed.
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I am an old haunt frequented by the cruel, unforgiving ghosts of loneliness.
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Your wife led us to you through the white picket fence and past your daughter’s house with two tight braids jumping up and down in the window, impatiently waiting to be taken to school.
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Ah yes, a day that will go down in Twitter history: the day JK Rowling declared that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had an ‘intense’ sexual relationship…
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Exeter can seem rather cut off from the wider county. Some even say it is a piece of Surrey transplanted here, but I think they just have not walked far enough from the campus bubble…
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Every time I have to explain this part of my life, I begin with the assurance that I am okay and I have moved on and you shouldn’t worry.
In part, it is because I cannot bear to bring emotion into the description. Being watched with eyes full of pity is consuming and reminds me that I am the all-dreaded word; a ‘victim’.
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