By ten past nine, Peter had come out of the printer instead of the quarterly figures. Not Peter. His photograph, cropped badly at the shoulders. The hymn numbers. The line about donations to St Luke’s Hospice. Twenty-eight sheets slid into the tray, warm, curled, before I pressed cancel. Someone had changed the copier […]
Competition Thirty-Four Highly Commended: Please Take One Read More »
The courier handed me Marlene with a receipt to sign, like delivering takeaway. I slid her into a cobalt-blue jar with a silver lid. We’d had eight years, three flats, two broken hearts—mine early, hers eventually. She left twice before it stuck. The funeral home said scatter her somewhere meaningful. But Marlene never stayed.
Competition Twenty-Nine Highly Commended: What Remains, Luminous Read More »
The morning I stopped ageing, the sea began to speak—to me alone. I listened. Margaret found me ankle-deep in tide pools off Kilmore Quay, sketching coastlines that shouldn’t exist. I’d mapped this stretch for decades—every dune shift, every storm bite. Today, the sea whispered coordinates I’d never drawn—ghostly inlets, forgotten harbours. “You’re
Competition Twenty-Eight Highly Commended: The Cartographer’s Last Shore Read More »
