I am not one thing.I am not just the woman who survived, or the woman who fell apart, or the woman who loved men with broken hinges and weather warnings stitched into their sleeves.I am not just the mother counting coins, cooking tea, filling the car, the cupboards, the silence, filling everybody else while wondering…

I reached for the curtain. Sunlight flared, white and sudden, flooding the room. I blinked. Then I froze. She stood where she always did. Red coat. Green dungarees. Blonde hair loose and ungoverned, as if the world had never taught it to behave. Leaves lifted and spun around her, reckless and bright against the sky.…

MissT I don’t feel liked.Not really.From my mother’s sharp mouthto the friends who smile kindly,nod softly,then drift sideways out of reach.My best friend came to all my weddings.Every hopeful beginning.Every version of medressed in white and trying again.And when she married the second time,I didn’t go.The man I was with didn’t want to.We lived an…

I did not carry youfor nine monthsto one day stand tremblingin my own kitchenafraid of your temper.That is the sentenceno mother rehearses.Because before the slammed words,before the cigarette ash by the doorway,before girls and chaosand plates left fossilised in the sink,there was you.Tiny socks on radiators.Cartoons before school.A feverish forehead against my neck.Your small hand…

​A day. A night. Years spent looking after you. Creams for your eczema. Rubbing your back. Massages. Endless cups of coffee. Boxes of wine, four bottles at a time, carried home like offerings. ​Those endless looks of disgust. Wishing you’d wash the blood from your clothes. Boils weeping through your skin. The ripe smell of…

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to love someone back to life. It is a quiet, domestic tragedy played out in the space between the grocery list and the betting shop, between the hope of a “new start” and the reality of stained sheets. For a long time, I thought…

misst The ink is dry, the signal’s gone,The heavy air begins to clear.A quiet battle has been wonAgainst the weight of shame and fear.For years you carried every word,The sharp critiques, the glass, the smell,A voice that begged to be preferred,While yours was locked within a cell.But “sorry” is a hollow soundWhen habits never seem…

by MissT Let the waters turn to silt,blackening like a stone-sealed well;let ink seep through the pageas if it remembered what it hid.Let old loyalties lie downin the chapel’s sifted dust,where names carved into pewswear smooth under careless hands.Leave revenge behind the glass,cold iron refusing to forget rust;we once, as children, gave ourselvesnot knowing what…

She wears her kindness like a coat,buttoned high around each note,every word just trimmed and neat…yet something doesn’t quite sit right in the heat.Her eyes don’t match the things she says,they flicker sideways through the haze,measuring, weighing, keeping score,quiet wars behind the door.She builds her throne from whispers thin,lets silence do the heavier sin,a queen…