The thin white body of the woman floated face down in the dark water. Her hands drifted weightlessly against the algae-slick brick side of the canal as though feeling for a door on which to knock, a door that was not there. The short crop of bleach-blonde hair was muddied by aquatic weeds, a braid of green snaking down her bare spine and into the discoloured cotton underwear that lay translucent against her skin. On either side of her torso, just visible from above as the wat

I’m in the back of an Uber on a loop road at night that I have never seen before. I see the driver’s eyebrows in the rearview mirror and try to keep up a nonchalant attitude that won’t give me away. I look longingly out every window. The driver gestures toward his window. “You see out there?” It’s too dark to see anything in particular, but I nod anyway. He becomes grave with unnatural quickness. “Do not ever go there.” “Oh, really?” I say, still trying not to draw attentio

I am a woman with seventeen spreadsheets, three funding deadlines, and a compost pile that could testify in court. I label seed packets as though my seeds might arrive unannounced and ask to see my methodology. Sunflowers are numbered because chaos is not educational and hope requires a system. I run a business called Organically Grown Queen, which sounds impressive until you realise it means explaining soil health to people who think herbs come with instructions. I teach chi

Writer and scenic artist Elissa Morton visited the Old Royal Naval College and the University of Greenwich to hear from the people behind the iconic visual world of Bridgerton. After waiting for a moment in the venue's gift shop, purusing tote bags and pencil cases, I knew it was time to enter the hall. Not because there was any kind of announcement, but from the eruption of cafe chairs scrapping across the floor as guests rushed to the hall's entrance. As we made our way in,

Jilly sat at the table as her father packed their few clothes into a suitcase, a battered old blue one with a broken doo-hickey on one end - duct tape worked just as well as getting a new suitcase , he had told her once. The can of tuna had been polished off. Her father had eaten one spoonful. He said he wasn't that hungry after his long day; he lied, she knew.   The candle flickered and stuttered, grew steady again.  “Are we going to Aunt Belinda’s?“  Aunt Belinda had a s

The house was empty. The wake was over, and the guests had left. Jack had buried his mother. His father had gone a couple of years earlier. Now what? He kept thinking about the past. When he was a young adult and things seemed to be opening-up, before they all closed-off again as he got older. He had to get out. The mood in the old council house was all wrong and he felt like he was suffocating. Jack headed to the place where he always would start his escape as a teenager – C

Sound The first time I draped the beige tussar silk saree, I had no premonition. Even when I ran my fingers across the embroidered flowers and paisleys on the dull gold of the coarse silk while adjusting the pleats, there were no whispers. The soft rustles were empty. Except for the mellow jingles of the gold butterfly danglers and bangles beneath the whirring fan, there was neither a sigh nor a chide. I had expected at least a rebuke. When nothing came drifting in the aftern

Whenever I expressed an interest in learning Garifuna as a child, my parents dissuaded me by saying, "It's too hard to learn. Just learn Spanish instead."  It's an Arawakan language that was created on St. Vincent during the 1600s when Africans were shipwrecked on the island. The Indigenous groups — Kalinago and Arawak — adopted the marooned Africans into their culture.  I had spent hours standing with aching legs in the kitchen as I helped my mother knead the masa for pana

You keep buying pearls. Pearls you can’t afford. From an online auction. You get to see them squish your treasures out of their host before words of affirmation pour in from the Popper — you don’t know his real title but he gets a bonus for so-and-so amount of likes, ass kisses, and innuendo. You watch your pearls’ mamas discarded after their meat has been picked clean. You are sad, watching their violations. But not sad enough. Not enough to stop watching the livestreams eve

It’s hard to explain my relationship with religion. It’s a past that I inexplicably fail to escape and a truth that follows wherever I go. The thing with religious trauma is that you don’t just leave the church; there is always a little steeple living in your chest, each corner of the Lord’s House digging into the softness of your flesh. Forever, a little church lives within your body, and it either sings or it howls condemnations. For over a decade, the parish of my body see

London, 1997 Confident woman in magenta pink I would guess that you were a similar height to me so 5ft 5. You have wavey long black and...

Life gets in the way of a great many things, same as I feel I often get in the way of how life could play out, executive dysfunction be...

I came to our our old house, still with unpacked boxes and like those boxes our lives stayed packed too, all those years. Ghost me, is...

TW: rape, violence Without time, causation makes no sense. Measure time how you like. There's our biological clock and our everyday...

If you go to a cinema on a Sunday afternoon in the winter, it’ll be dark by the time you leave. You feel like the world is about to end....

There is a story told by Thespians in Warwickshire: there was a hidden grove in the country, a clearing where those with a thirst for...

My mother is setting the table for dessert when it happens. Rooting in unfamiliar drawers, she has opened the one crammed with candles,...

Times are hard, but the stroking helps. It’s steady, mantric, grounding. Dean is comforted by the rhythm. It’s satisfying, like the easy...

To an observer trying to analyse what has happened, it may look like nothing’s changed. It’s still just me, my blue pyjamas, my bed by...

Firepit Art Gallery sits on the water in Greenwich, and when I arrive it is a beautiful but furiously windy evening. The water moves...