She stops at the gates of the hospital, chafes her delicate fingers together. Maybe today is the day? Down the street he tramps along, searching for his eyes. In the flashes of the hurried strangers, there was not a trace of soul. He was the last one. He must be…

His eyes flutter open, colours spangled across his irises like stars in the night. Pushing apart the stones, his face was perfumed. Honey-sweet and sickly, like soft camellias draped in mildew, petals wafting under a summer haze. It was the smell of earth after rain, of stale incense and something…

Constricting and intense. She shuffled between my arms. Gently, gently lilting her head, she slept in my lap. Heaving and warm. Body and flesh so earthly, fresh and firm. In the quietness of the carriage I pondered many things unrelated in nature, drawn together like the ribbon-strings behind Amelia’s corset…

two vignettes to remember the end of things. Body sloped close to the earth, he tucked himself into his hollow with long and drawn-out breaths, eyes watery. The smell of rotting acorns instantly enveloped him, sickly sweet and wafting. Turning-round he saw the glimmer of the little white fencepost where…

Mother, I know you sometimes cry to the voices of the midnight bells. Mother, I know you sometimes cry to the voices of the midnight bells. It was Herdis who told me, that she oft prayed together with you, two shadows kneeled on the salt-crusted floorboards under that high nave…

an extract from my journal, written in a hut in the Victorian Alps. Perhaps it is best that I reflect upon the previous night’s entry. Or rather, the lack of it. Torrential rainfall struck us after the noon rest over the highland plateau between Hotham and Feathertop, and caught us…

an emulation of ‘Narcissus & Echo’, in pentameter That reflection to her eyes seemed to grow, More shapeless and loveless at every blow. At a senseless and deathless thing he wrought, A cenotaph of his wonderous thought. O love, my love, one who never wilt know That I, thy lover, have…

…down where the cicadas slept, curled up against the roots of the cherry-sakuras like babies. It was a troubled place to be in, and it seemed like he knew. Standing tense amid all those painted flags, the old man finally felt the heaviness of flesh and bone — sagging, almost…