“Well?!” Her eyes bulge as if they’d grown fists to plant on hips. “Say something!”

What can I say? I’m not sure what she wants me to do. Is this a real issue, or does she just need food? If so, do I just start making stuff? Say something, man. I peel my eyes away from her glare and focus on the lines of our tiled floor. It’s been too long. I can feel my head making minute motions, darting as I calculate at break-neck speeds.

“I—” No, that’s a bad idea.

“THIS! This is what I mean!” I don’t think she realises she is shouting. “You just stand there. Just say what you are thinking. Gah, just say something. Christ!”

“I didn’t realise the water was getting cold.”

“How can you no— Eugh! How hard is it to just say that, then? Why do you freeze up like you’re being told off?”

Because I am. How do you explain this to someone who fell for my strength, my confidence. Someone who wants a man, not a collection of old scars using feeble words to placate them. What does a man do when the woman he loves is so angry and unpredictable? Why does this feel so familiar?

My thoughts are interrupted by her sudden movement as she swipes the pans from the draining board, hurling them into a clatter on the hard tiles. I don’t startle, but I feel the anger boil up in me, then the fear that I might use it shoves it back down to safety, and I hear a ringing in my ears.

My chest tightens, and the kitchen leaves me. I flop to the cold tile and twenty-two years swirl down the drain as I pry my six-year-old hands from the cold porcelain sink to grip my sister, as I curl into her arms, hiding in the darkness of our downstairs toilet; more a closet. It is dark and we don’t dare make a sound. I flinch before I realise what has happened.

A broom handle spears itself through the door, its shaft piercing the wood and letting light bleed in through tiny cracks and splinters. The wood hovers an inch in front of me. We sit, stunned to a still silence. A violent tussle begins to shake the broom, and it catches on the splintered wood.

There is a feral roar as the door rips open. The broom follows it silent and obedient as it is shoved aside. My sister curls around me but is pulled away and thrashed. She is thrown into the wall, punched, kicked, and then sent scurrying. When she is done, my mom turns to me.

“Well?” There is spittle as she barks the question. I don’t know what she wants me to say. I don’t even know why she is mad. I am wracking my brain trying to think of the right words to fix this, but there are no words. I am six. Just a kid. “WELL?!”

When my brother died, the Oxford University flew its flag at half-mast. My ex-wife refused to visit the chapel of rest, not for a cruel reason, but because she held her last memory of him, as a beautiful image of us: shirtless and smiling, after a long day of working in the sun.

The day before he was found, he’d been to a house party. Going by the trace amounts of narcotics they found in the autopsy report, I imagine it was a banger. At his funeral, a young girl told me how they met that night.

As she was leaving the party, he was leaving too. There was a heavy rain, and she stood under the porch, hoping to wait it out. One eccentricity of his was that he tried to always carry an umbrella with him. Honestly, I think he wanted a cane but needed a practical reason to justify having one; thus, umbrella.

The girl told me he asked her which way she was heading, and told her he was going that way, so they could share the umbrella, and keep dry. She said he was kind, funny, and a complete gentleman. He left the umbrella with her at her gate, watched her until she was indoors, and to her surprise, he walked back the way they came.

At the funeral, I told her he lived on the other side of town. She didn’t say a word or cry; she touched my arm and smiled. Every year, his friends hold a free music and poetry festival, and they all have stories like this. They all laugh and smile when they talk about him. They all have these stories that speak of his character.

While they remember him this way, my own memories are less perfect. Our childhood was difficult, and I wasn’t the best of brothers. I wish I had been. I tried harder in adulthood but still fell short of the mark. He was smarter than me. He was a better man than me, and it pains me to be the one who survived instead of him.

But it warms me that people still hold these memories of him. I believe that this life is it. It’s all we get. So, I am thankful that they each keep these fond memories of him. That they keep his memory alive and well in this fleeting world of ours is all I can ask.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Feeling hot, Sam reaches up to wipe sweat from his brow, but instead streaks something thick and viscous across it.

What is that?

He looks at his hands.

Lacquer? No.

“Oh!” He exclaims, a nervous laugh erupting from the pit of his stomach. “It's just sap.” He laughs again, this time more forced, as if to chase away a deep-seated worry.

He wrestles a difficult log up onto the block, centering and securing it. He reaches out to a long slender piece of wood, his axe, resting against a nearby tree, hefting it into his other hand and moving into position.

The wind bullies the trees to his left, and Sam’s head darts up; nothing. His neck whips from left to right, eyes frantic, searching the surrounding woodlands.

Wolves? No.

This time, he can’t force the laughter out. He turns back to the task at hand, grips near the head of the axe, letting it slide the length of the handle as he puts his whole back into the swing.

The blade falls heavy. Tina’s screams become gargled as blood spills out onto the block.

What is that?

“Oh! It's just sap.” He laughs, hefting the axe above his head.

Steven’s Christmas dinner is a pilgrimage of Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. The Holy Trinity of British-acquired aromatics spills from the thurible-turkey in the monastic hours of the morning, spreading their message through the house; its congregation having not yet arisen. By the time Steven has slammed closed the door on at least three boys trying to dish-wash their way into an early sacrament, myself included, the adults are up and tending their flocks.

“You aren’t opening anything until you’ve brushed your teeth!”

“I don’t care if everyone else got to open one last night; they aren’t us. You can wait.”

The world is full of magic, broad and varied. But for those who use it to conjure their food and can’t understand, which is damned near everyone these days, cooking a bird this big for midday begins at an ungodly hour. Steven plays the long game, though; it’s more than just cooking. His turkey is always delicious; I love his turkey, but I am in love with his roast potatoes.

Their journey begins in the dirt. Steven cultivates his own vegetables, king among them the potato. He doesn’t use any of that artificial garbage or arcane mumbo-jumbo in his gardening. Oh, he talks to his crops, in fact he preaches to them. He never uses the old languages. No Latin enters his garden. Phoenician is way out. He is very careful to tell his sermons in plain English. Well, he is Gloucester born and bred, so I use the term English loosely. Engerlish?

“While the erf remainef, seedtoime an' 'arvest, an' cold an' 'eat, and sum'er and win'er, and day and noight shall not cease.”

Steven doesn’t care for magic. He says he isn’t religious, either. Says he just likes The Bible. He doesn’t notice the irony in its translation. Steven grows real vegetables, right in the dirt. Each year, he ordains five boys as helpers in his garden.

“Foive thick spades for foive thick boys.” He jokes, but nobody in this priesthood protests, because we all know that our work is sacred.

One year, young Brother Brant complained, “But Uncle, there are easier ways to do this,” throwing his arms up with a childish pout, not for the first time that day.

Steven didn’t respond except to approach the boy, reach out his hand, and receive the shovel from a penitent child. That year, Steven’s niece, Emma, to Brant’s shame and his niece’s delight, replaced Brant in the garden.

That Christmas, they conjured Brant’s meal for him at great financial cost to the family, and a greater spiritual cost to Brant. As a child, he had not understood the cost of a conjuring on Christmas. The greater cost to his soul and taste buds hit Brant harder, though. Almost nobody whose eaten Steven’s Christmas dinner would jeopardise their chances like that. Nobody ever did it twice.

Steven grows Maris Piper potatoes. Preaches sermons on starch content and low moisture varieties. He parboils the spuds with their skin on. Letting them drain and cool before peeling it away and quartering them. He shakes them, roughening them up and coating their edges in a fluffy white jacket, then he baptizes them in hot beef drippings.

He turns them in their baptismal font, giving each one its own space, and fully anointing them as they sizzle and spit in the hot fat. He seasons them with large salt crystals taken from his left palm, and finally, drops in a few peeled cloves of garlic, and a sprig of rosemary, before sliding the tray in the oven, turning them only once before they are done.

When I say his roasties are out of this world, I lie. I mean that you will never feel as connected to the dirt as when you crunch through that buttery golden mantle, into the soft, fluffy core, and taste everything that goes into making that roasted spud. I don’t mean love. I mean that it carries the natural richness of the soil with it, as a subtle, earthy undertone that makes each roast potato whole. The love you feel in each bite is primal. It’s simply because Steven knows not to taint the spud with spells or boil away its earthly soul. He knows what a roastie should be and takes the time to make it proper.

We are all affected by death. I have lost friends, people I cared for, and my brother–a loss that we both felt deeply. I lost you too, Mom, multiple times. Some mistakes were mine; others, yours. For a while now, I have been terrified that our estrangement was a mistake. That when you died, it would break me.

These things are meant for the living, not the dead, and I suspect that most people will think I am a monster for speaking out here… but I am part of the living.

I won’t go into detail about what she did and didn’t do for us as a parent. I won’t pretend that I am not angry, either. Relationships are complex, and difficult. I want to explain how this estrangement came about.

We rarely spoke unless she needed something, but that wasn’t enough of a reason. I had honestly forgiven her for our childhood. As adults, we all did what we could to care for her, and when she lost her son, I know that it broke her. We all pitched in to care for her. She didn’t reciprocate. It was all one way. It always was.

Still, this didn’t stop us; we kept trying. I have never been good at caring for myself but having a kid has fixed something inside me. When I thought that she didn’t care about my daughter, I left. In some ways, I think I was wrong. In her own way, she cared about her, but I couldn’t risk my child being hurt by her, so I kept my distance.

I realise that what I am doing may be selfish. But I also want people to know that I don’t hate my mother. I want nobody here to assume that just because we didn’t speak, she was a bad person. I do not think she was.

She kept her kids fed and clothed. She gave me her sense of humour, her eclectic taste in music and culture. She thought that everyone should be treated equally, even if she struggled, like we all do, not to put some ahead of others. I forgave my mom for any wrong she ever did me and my siblings, and I understand that her past also made her unable to be the person she might have wanted to be. Even as I kept my distance, I didn’t hate her. Fear gripped me for my daughter’s sake, and my own. In many ways, we both failed each other.

Despite the distance I kept, I bear her no ill will. More than that, I love her. I hope that she is at peace now, and I am glad for anyone who was able to be her friend, past or present. To anyone who loved her and needs support, I offer the support I couldn't give her in life. With the resources available, she did the best she could - that's all anyone can ask.

Your son.

For myself, it can be a number of things that sometimes feel contradictory. I enjoy challenges that aren't hyper-specific in their subject matter and yet, I am often drawn to posts that ARE hyper-specific in their formatting. The specifics of the challenge are important to me, but I need to be putting my own unique thought into that.

An example of a good and bad challenge for me would be as follows:

Good:

Write a piece of prose/flash fiction under 500 words based on the quote "It all adds up to much the same on the plane of proof."

or

Write a poem in Iambic Pentameter on the subject of darkness and light.

Bad:

Steven is a 16 year old from Newport. Sick of his boring life, he decides to pack his guitar and go on the road. Any format.

(I won't write this second one out, but I am not usually a fan of being given a paragraph, or even a few sentences as an opening to a story that I should continue. I don't mind doing this sort of thing in real time with people, but not just me and one person, in this format.)

Be evocative. Be specific in your format and open with your subject matter. :)

Dear Valued Consumer,

This letter is in response to a series of complaints we have received on behalf of, and by you, regarding your recent experiences with our services, and whilst we aren’t registered as a business, nor do we charge a fee for any services we provide, I feel it necessary to reach out and discuss these matters with you personally.

The primary concern I feel it important to address is how we have not met your requirements in a satisfactory way. On several occasions, we have received direct complaints and have offered compensation for, or reassurances, that our future efforts will be satisfactory, and whilst we have endeavored to continuously improve our product, we appear to have fallen short of these goals.

A comprehensive relationship optimization roadmap is being developed. Regarding this, we have detailed key complaints below, with brief explanations.

Customer Feedback Log - 15th January 2025

Following a complaint regarding your treatment in which we neglected to meet your needs in a satisfactory manner, specifically regarding the spontaneity of a free, spontaneous promotion being thrust upon you at an untimely moment. We apologise profusely for our mishandling of the situation and can only hope to improve on our scheduling in the future.

We also apologise for our attempt to correct this mistake, where you made further complaints that we were “smothering you” and “only cared about ourselves”. Whilst we don’t want to add any more unwanted attention to you or for the issue, we would like to say that we do, in fact, care about you and hope to improve how attentive and responsive we are to your needs.

Customer Feedback Log - 14th January 2025

Several messages were sent from various sources reporting complaints you have made about our appearance at the front-of-house, and general fitness to perform our duties, including some personal grievances regarding the handling of our internal affairs. Whilst we allowed you to see the inner workings of our business at your own request, we were unaware that this would affect your perception of our service and make it harder for us to perform to a standard that meets your, now higher, expectations.

We feel it important to state that our personal communications are confidential and intended solely for the aforementioned consumer. Moving forward, we will attempt to maintain a professional appearance and think it might be more useful for all parties if we avoided any future probing into the internal workings of our services; keep things close to our chest, as it were. Rest assured, we will attempt to fix all the problems that you have already brought up with our local customer base.

Customer Feedback Log - 10th January 2025

According to your own analytics, our past performance is not indicative of current romantic returns. After a period of inactivity, you requested we make more of an effort, giving examples like “We could make kind gestures and offer more promotions in the future.” Our team attempted to offer you promotions, but you had a further request that you didn’t want the promotion there and then but that you would prefer it if we showed some initiative and offered them of our own accord with more spontaneous timing. You also mentioned that you wished we would pay you more attention and that, as a consumer, you felt starved of attention.

We can only apologise for these issues, and hope that we can do better for you in the future. We understand that this is an exclusive arrangement and hope that you retain our services for the future, pending a more formal agreement, though we understand how disappointed in our current performance you must be.

As per our relationship metrics and KPIs, we hope to improve ourselves and better meet your needs in the future.

With Kind Regards

Percy Veer

Head of Consumer Relations

Department of Emotional Resources

Ref: HEART-Q1-2025/003

I lay my weary head upon that soft long grass,

And yours sleeps in the shade of the old apple tree.

I do not dig deep, for desperate aches rest shallow,

I reach for what’s been pressing against the latchkey.

Behind the mist and haze and broken memories,

A fragile, almost cold light, flickers on the wick.

It’s the thought of you punting from Magdalen Bridge,

And I watch it escape in ripples from pale flame.

So, I close my heart and bring down the latch once more,

For fear, one day, I open it, and you are gone.

Secreted away in a dimly lit corner of the Heart and Hound; a man and woman share repurposed church pews nestled around a worn table. Tall pew sides and low ceilings provide sanctuary from the persistent din of the outside world.

“I was surprised you agreed to meet.”

“I was surprised to get your message, Kathy.”

She shifts in her seat, “After I heard about his death, I—”

“Yeah. A lot of people contacted me at first. That died down, eventually.” He takes a deep breath. “Sorry it took so long.”

“I wanted to give you time, John.”

“I loved him.”

“We all did.”

“No, the same way I loved you.” The words strike like a bolt, “Teenager stuff, ya know. Feels profound, but really, you don’t have the tools to understand. He looked up to me. Asked me how to dress ‘cool’. As if I ever was.”

“You did alright.”

“I never said, but I used to have fantasies about us three living together.” John gathers strength and locks eyes. The sweet, earthy scent of ginger announces a waitress, who places two beaten-copper cups between them. They give thanks in stumbled-unison and are alone again, sheltered in the momentary silence and weathered wood.

“Remember his dog?”

“The Black lab? I don’t remember its name.”

“Her name.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t either.” John fidgets with condensation on the cup. “Whenever he had a problem, he’d lay in bed with her and talk it through. Said that she was always there for him. I think that loyalty kept him level.”

“She died, though?”

“Yeah.”

Kathy shakes her head. The movement is subtle, as if a tense emotion is trying to escape and she shakes to keep it in. John proffers his cup. They raise their cups to an unspoken toast.

“The night it happened, he called me around midnight bawling his eyes out. I’d never heard him cry before and bam, I was sneaking out the bathroom window and running to his.”

“At midnight? He lived near me, John, that’s miles!”

“A familiar journey.” Katherine’s mouth curls up. “We sat on a red-bricked wall down an alley near his, and I listened. He talked until dawn. Well, until his dad came upon us on his way back from work and wrangled him home.”

“Was he angry?”

“At first. He understood, eventually. The frustration fell away... somewhat.”

“Only somewhat?”

“You know how it is with kids.”

“Yeah. Still, it was kind of you.”

“Oh, it wasn’t altruism. I’m not a good person. I just wanted to be the one who was there for him. I wanted to be—” John’s voice cracks and Kathy reaches out to squeeze his hand, “He loved that dog.”

They sit for a beat, the slow silence forces their attention to the warmth of their hands. Kathy gently rubs her thumb over John’s knuckle, then freezes. John’s thumb twitches and they quickly return to their drinks. The clinking of ice and beaten metal chases away the silence.

“Why did you two stop hanging out?”

John blows out his cheeks.

“Sorry, Wanna keep it light?”

“Nah,” a sip punctuates the point, “Do you remember the poem ‘I am very bothered’?”

“No, sorry.”

“Armitage? School?” He asks. Her response is a blank stare. “Doesn’t matter. In the poem, he symbolises his affections for a girl by burning a ring into her hand. And, well, I didn’t know how to express myself back then.”

“John, you didn’t?”

“I know. It’s weird. He didn’t understand. Even less so than the kid in the poem. The school nurse treated his burn and he pretty much avoided me after that. He made a better friend.”

“Stan. Those two were inseparab—” Kathy pauses as John tables his cup a little too hard. She cocks her head low, looks up into his downcast eyes and softens her voice, “Sorry, John. I didn’t think. I—”

“You apologise too much.”

“Now, if I apologise, it’ll make matters worse.” They erupt in awkward fake laughter and share a glance that lets them see the truth. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide it.” The laughter subdues. “Did you ever tell him?”

“Ha! If only I could.”

“Oh my God, you remember Aqua?”

“’Turn back time’? First CD I ever bought.”

“I thought you preferred Barbie Girl.”

“No, but in truth, I like it.”

“Oh, John.”

“Pretend you don’t.”

“We’re hiding again.”

“If only I had said, would I still hide?”

“Insufferable.”

“Hint taken. I don’t think he knew it was a rejection, but I’m still jealous of Stan. Well, envious.”

“That I understand.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I was always envious of you two.”

“Really?!”

“Yes! You were always together.”

“Oh, he spent most of that time talking about you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He was besotted, but you always seemed to have someone. It’s why he struggled to talk to you at times,” John lowered his voice to barely above a whisper, “and it’s partly why I hadn’t answered your messages.”

“Our friendship... This... it’s complicated, John.”

“Always was.”

They finish drinking before the ice has a chance to melt and order two more.

In a small box, tucked away behind a deflated blow-up bed, in a dresser whose doors were dust lined along the crevasses, were all the secret keepsakes that everyone agreed were weird for me to hold on to.

My mother was a hoarder. She held on to everything like a dysfunctional dragon’s treasure. When the box room became inaccessible, her things had spilled out into the house. I was not like my mother, I thought. Yet I held onto this box of strange things.

Among my shameful collection was a plastic tub with one shrivelled, discoloured white chocolate mouse; I hoped was once a sweet gesture to a girl I might still have love for today. I’ve been married and divorced since then.

I had dropped the mouse at a party in our teens, back when I was athletic, more confident, and not at all a ‘shambles’. I joked at offering it to her, knowing she saw me drop it. I kept it, offering it every time we reconnected. Years could pass between visits, and the girl now lived halfway around the world, married.

After my divorce, and another chance reconnection, we had gotten close again, and I remembered my love for her. She was a good person, slightly broken, but strong. I think the attraction was mutual, but I sabotaged my chances intentionally. I couldn’t subject her to my sorry state and in an ego power play, ‘let her be free of me’, whatever that means.

A metal tin, the most prized possession from my marriage, not my ring, still makes me swell up with joy, and bittersweet sadness. Inside were little black cards, each with a message from my friends, family, co-workers and wife, telling me why they loved me.

It was the sweetest, kindest thing anyone had ever done for me. It was the perfect Christmas gift. Though not expensive or luxurious, my once-wife had made it with sincere love and care, more precious to me than anything money could buy. If I ever open the now dented tin and read the cards to myself; I cry loud and hard.

I felt both happiness and each betrayal as I tucked the messages, one by one, to the back of the pile. If I ever killed myself, I thought, they would find me in a pile of black cards, beside that battered tin, having suffered through a deserved, lonely death.

I was a romantic and held onto sentiment deep inside myself. My entire life others, through words and actions, conveyed the message, emotional expression is unsafe. At one point, before my brother’s funeral, I felt safe to feel things out loud, to share my emotions. After a year of difficult therapy, I finally opened up about my secret pain. They all left me, even used that pain as a tool against me. I sank deep into the armchair, keeping my eyes pinned forward; the wardrobe, abandoned and looming in my peripheral. I didn’t dare cry