You flushed like a Maiden’s Blush apple when you unwrapped his gift.

I wear your face to the party.

Erin wanted to go down to the dog park again but Ann, Erin’s mother, couldn’t face it today.

She dreamt of stillness for her soul.

She thought at first it was dead – it lay flat in the middle of the garden, a triangle, its head lost in feathers.

It was difficult being a single dad — but even more difficult being a single dad to a vampire. 

This is the second time you meet the skinny teenage American.

i

can no longer 

fool myself

Orange blossoms fall from the trees, twirling like miniature cocktail umbrellas, slowly descending on hot air perfumed by summer as we drive underneath.

The gentle rain had started early that January morning, but by 3:00 that afternoon it had transformed our small family farm into an unrecognizable frozen landscape as the dropping temperature turned the rain to ice.

It was the autumn we left childhood behind.

When I died, she says, I didn’t.

Before I met you, I was a deer

trapped in a maze of skyscrapers,

headlights barreling around me

in every direction. 

She sat beneath the trees because she needed the darkness first.

one day

you stopped existing

A secret stash of Pritt Sticks and Blu Tack.

I had been abroad for the best part of twenty years, most recently in South Africa, but after my latest business venture failed, I began to think about retirement and decided to return to England.

Your voice reverberates though the empty town. 

People do not hold each other closely in the place I come from.

I’ve always had a weakness for three things: the absurd, beginnings and coffee.