Was I young once or have I always been? Did I spring twisted and unexpected from this parched ground, this frozen, more-rock-than-soil ground, or did the earth form around me?Or did the Earth form around me? Does the sky hang on my high-reaching limbs?I have no memory of youth – so long ago… so many suns and moons and seasons

When I woke my cross was turned wrong side out, silver to the world, gold inward. Must have been some dream I can’t remember, one from the genre of tumult and fire and whipped up clouds. Art can do many things — sit, roll over, speak, piss. Even atone. We prefer shock and awe, of course, which doesn’t make it

I can’t remember where I read the quote ‘there’s nothing so invisible as a monument,’ but it certainly applied to the statue in the neglected square outside my flat. It wasn’t one of those statues that people interacted with, dressing them in Everton shirts or Liverpool hats, like the Beatles at the Pier Head or the Antony Gormley men on

I put on my black dress with slow, robotic movements and roll on the matching gloves that reach my elbows. Its delicate fabric scratches my over-exfoliated hands; they are taking longer than I wanted to heal, the damage evident in the way my skin has started to crack. I hate funerals. An entire day dedicated to a passing as though

“Miss?”Red in my eyes. Finding it hard to see. Hard to breathe.“Miss?”The voice is all around me. Light, but distant. I can’t see him. I can’t see anything. I’m in a bubble of red light and there is a tune playing. Something I heard long ago.“Is this your blood? Miss?”His voice is hard. Hard enough to silence the music.A hand

The morning the baby arrived was warm and I had just pulled a frittata from the oven. I was thinking of the crossword I’d abandoned on the couch, and the ferns that needed watering, when the doorbell rang. Most times it rang once or twice before they left on the stoop what I’d ordered: yoga pants or lightbulbs or a