Gemdrop

“Is there something terribly wrong with me?” I sigh and look up from my book. In the evening light my grandmother stares back at me, utterly unaware that it’s the third time she’s asked in as many minutes. Complex maps of wrinkles frame her wide eyes, each crease charting the grief, joy and laughter of a lifetime she is slowly forgetting. I look at her and I remember the wit and spark that used to punctuate her speech. I remember the way she used to strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere; how she’d find wonder in the simplicity of everyday life. Her curiosity, her sense of adventure, her love of the worl

Friday 5.30pm, and my face was pressed to the armpit of another man, with the leather strap almost cutting off the blood supply to my hand.  The groin of a stranger was touching my back every time the carriage cornered.  A girl breathed hot chocolate into my ear.  It sounds erotic, now I think about it, but it wasn’t.  The only way I can cope with that squeeze of people, the second-hand air of three hundred diseased strangers on the Jubilee Line, is by going into myself.  I become utterly absorbed in the music on my ipod.  Ray Davies is singing only to me.  Sometimes I accidentally mouth the words and attract the disinterested but oppro

one.     When she cries herself to sleep     six out of seven nights a week you must     say nothing. You must simply take     her in your arms and kiss her gaunt,     pale cheeks and wait for her to     slumber at the sound of your heart. two.     On the days where she wishes she     were part of the stars, tell her     no. Tell her that there are too many     lights in the sky and that just one     would be forgotten the moment you looked     away from it. Tell her that she is perfect     the way she is: completely human. three.      Don't let her think about the scars      that no one but her can see. If she      says

I guess it’s kind of funny, if you think about it. You always see in the movies – in the TV shows – people running and screaming and praying and stuff. That’s what Hollywood always thought it would be like. Some sort of ‘death cloud’ or something – or like an asteroid or something like that – that just happened: that just totally hit everybody by surprise. People have known about it for months. It’s not like in the movies. The word ‘inevitability’ comes to mind: and hey, guess what? Nobody cares to run from the inevitable. It’s pretty stupid – isn’t it, if yo

   I hate rain. Not really, I love it. Just not when the most beautiful, perfect, wonderful, perfect, comfortable, waterproof, perfect coat in existence has been savagely butchered by my so-called friend’s Dalmatian. Every slap of rain on my naked arms is a stinging reminder of the irreparable hole in my wardrobe.   Some people might try to fill the void with lesser coats but I can’t bring myself to betray Valentino, even after her death. Instead my slippery arms grapple with each other in wet shock as I stumble to the op shop, clinging to one last thread of hope. I know in my deadened heart that I’ll never have another co

She wandered the shadows of the streets day and night, face hidden and a frayed basket in her hands. A beggar. Shunned, she became like a bit of dust in the breeze, lost among the many faceless passerby. But she would not be deterred. Her task was one worthy of determination, it was too important to be left to chance. For she was not trying to get, but to give. The beggar bore the basket before her as if it were made of spun glass and it was only her sheer will power holding it together. She offered it up to any gentlemanly face that came her way. “Please sir, will you take this gift?” But those few that did not pass by her wo