I bought her this bar of chocolate. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a nice gesture, y’know. Something to show I cared. Anyway, unlike me, who eats a sweet treat as soon as it’s in my grubby mitts, she put it in a box under her side of the bed, saving it for later. The box Read more

There was a video of some sort. A stream. On the internet. A woman, cooking. Exotic it was. Both the food she was handling and herself. As the light fizzed upon her olive skin, she beamed and whipped her bowl of eggs and flour—the enthusiasm oozing out of her like sweat. Everything was so well Read more

I usually wake for work dead-on 4 am. The second the alarm stirs me, I leave the bed and go for a piss then head into the kitchen. I have a strict regime I abide by. There are twelve minutes. Twelve minutes from when I open my eyes to when I have to leave the Read more

The bath was too hot. It burnt my dipping toes, so I had to let some water go down the plughole and top it up with cold. I think I have arthritis in the big toe on my right foot. It hurts when I walk, but not too much. Not enough to bother a doctor Read more

Surrounded by leaves, the branches of the trees reach down and disturb my hair. I hate them for it, and yet at every opportunity, I kiss their bark as if I were kissing her. Closing my eyes, I see her mouth; her lips are as sugary as donuts. The expensive ones. Krispy Kremes. On her Read more

There’s a spider in the wine glass by the sink. I won’t go anywhere near it. I’ll drink straight from the bottle instead and save on the washing up. She’s upstairs, sleeping. She has work in the morning and went to bed early. It’s snowing. Not heavy or anything, but there’s magic in the air Read more

It’s cold. Almost winter. Her hair is long, not yet short. I run a bath for her. She refuses to get out of bed, so I yank the cover off, and she quickly makes a run for it as naked as the day she was born. In the bath, in the water, she is submerged. Read more

In the woods next to the quarry, on an old blanket in a clearing between tall trees, red ants crawl through the curls of her hair. They bite her scalp as I touch her. I touch her because I like her. I massage her feet and suckle her big toes as she writhes around on Read more

There was a boxer. Cliff Fields. When I was a kid, long after his boxing days, I often saw him walking the streets of my hometown scrounging for cash. He was a boozer. It was the boozing that got in the way of the boxing, although he still liked a good fight by all accounts. Read more