When I wake up it is my birthday. Mom and Dad aren’t there, but I hear their voices, so I walk down. They are standing at the front window. They don’t hear me. I look out the window. I feel like I got up too early. Nothing looks right. The cars are upside down. The […]

“Doña Isabel de Porcel,” I announce reverently, as we stand in front of her portrait. You look unimpressed. “My beloved,” I continue. “My one true love.” “In love with a painting?  A woman from another century?” You throw back your head and laugh, then walk away muttering. “Estás loco! Possessed by a ghost!” But who […]

I’d always been at odds with my friend Sophie’s fascination for the macabre.  While I enjoyed a light-hearted romcom, her tastes favoured the dark side.  And whereas I obsessed over the latest teenage heartthrob, she swooned over Dracula. It was her idea to take the shortcut to college, through the graveyard, that day we first […]

Nobody in the little town knew why Sofie, the old spinster, always had a mysterious smile on her lips. As long as people remembered, they had seen her walking between her apartment and the grocery store, constantly alone, wearing the same coat and the same smile. The reason for her satisfaction was kept in darkness […]

Honeybees, heavily laden with nectar and pollen from rosemary, marigolds, and sage, fly weary miles back to their hive. A conspiracy of ravens croak and soar and roost noisily in dense dark-green conifer trees. A fluffle of brown rabbits finish nibbling clover and wildflowers and dig deep, cozy burrows unaware that nearby a fox is […]

‘Six months, maybe a year.’ That’s all I really hear or understand, though my dad keeps talking like he’s afraid to stop. My mom holds his hand tightly and tries to smile, tries to be brave for us. But above her shoulder, out the large window, I can see our peach tree. The slight breeze […]

As the man opens the refrigerator door the stench yanks his nose hairs and hurtles upwards to the backs of his eyeballs squeezing them like a nurse pumping on a blood-pressure gauge. He steps back, retreating from the assault on his olfactory nerve. “Should have kept the facemask on all the way home from the […]

The removal van has just left, my parents have wished me well and said their goodbyes. I’m alone as I unpack in my new home and memories surface like bubbles in a glass of lemonade as I remember Saturday mornings at home. It was the time my Mother baked her apple pies, ‘’every one’s favourite’’. […]

The king stood in front of me. His strong figure was overpowering, and I stood in the middle of his shadow. The chapel was full of people eager to see me cross the bridge to knighthood. I was one of the only female knights, but I had saved the king’s life, and he decided I […]