Born betwixt times — head in the old year, feet in the new — Nyathera’s tiny fists punched the air like she wanted to fight the world.“Love her well, mumewangu,” implored her mother, but the words died even before the umbilical was cut, leaving her bitter father to raise Nyathera on goat’s milk, cassava and shame.The meagre diet didn’t stunt
I wanted to be held by something warm and human and complicated. Something woven so tightly you can’t see the spaces between.
1.On a particularly unforgiving morning Carla rings me and tells me to meet her at the V&A Museum where she plans to spend the day looking at people who are looking at paintings. I say yes. We meet in the main foyer and politely enquire after the other’s various schedules and scandals. In both, I am lacking, but Carla’s life
In the knee-graze days of bikes and black ant tickles, my mum gave me a comfort snuggle hug. That’s when I heard a click-tick sound inside her, where her boomy-womby heart once thumped its beat.The furniture at home was on the ceiling now. This change made me cry and she wrapped me in that clicking, ticking cuddle. She softly told
“Faith?”
Is he calling me Faith?
My name is Jane.
Most of my childhood fantasies concerned my decimation. Particularly on nights where I could not sleep. Hot and wet nights, heavy as a slobbering dog on your chest. I would imagine being dragged over cold, sandy soil. I would imagine solid, bodiless hands. Sleep became a forest someone else was carrying me in. The skeletal shadows arching across the ceiling
See the full list of winners and shortlisted authors. The winners and selected shortlisted and highly commended pieces will appear in a new hope-themed anthology in 2023. First Prize Short Story: Holly Barratt, ‘Anthropocene’ I’m a globe with legs. This ancient fit-to-burst rucsac on my back, and an ancient fit-to-burst belly on the front. Like an idiot I dressed in blue and
I sprang from the brackish water between Treasure Island and San Francisco. During the cold swim through the dark, bits of plastic bound together into fins that turned to legs, ripped-bag-gills fused into lungs, and I became.I spent my first night on a marshy bank in the body of a woman with the mind of a newborn. The East Cut
They brought my bed down into the parlour and put it just a little way from the fire. It feels like winter-black meltwater from the cows’ trough running through my veins, though it’s as fine a June as any of the sixteen I’ve been granted. They moved Grandpa’s bed last year, so I knew what was coming.“You’re a calamity, John
“You’re just a glorified waitress.”The California broker took Robin’s wrist. Bloody Mary spilled up her blue sleeve.“Sir,” she said, “I’d like to ask kindly that you put your seatbelt on and respect the captain’s rules. He knows best.”“Are you from Ala-bam-a?”“I’m from the Carolinas.”“Weyull, miss Southern belle, I said it once and I said it twice, but ya still didn’t
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