'We treated them like flowers, cracked their small stems and burnt their paper petals like this wasn’t a war.' 

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'This will take time.'

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Photo by Rachilli on Unsplash

'It hangs over us, sprays the room all white all nothing. The lightbulb flickers; sometimes light, sometimes not.'

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'Get up at midnight, time to change the nappy, it’s your turn. Then take your son in your arms, comfort him, love him, and stay with him until he falls asleep. Don’t sleep — you have to watch over the small boy.' 

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(Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash)

'They take the marker to you when you’re in the womb and you’ll be born with tattoos/ words/ the voices of everyone else.'

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'The drunken howls and shaking carriage of the train is deafening. You’re turned to reading the faces and bodies of this herd of others that pass in and out of a haze of noise. It’s a Friday night, and everyone is drunk/ tired/ a little broken.'

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(Photo by Charles Forerunner on Unsplash)

'Dead, I know I am. The heart no longer beating, the warmth of my wife’s hand all gone. Forget faith, forget heaven, forget the rest of it, the science is definitive – I’m dead.'

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'You discard a plastic bottle on the street. You tell yourself you dropped it/ it fell/ you were late and you don’t normally do this.'

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'This is about peeling vegetables. I first learned to peel all vegetables from my parents, who said it was the right thing to do.'

 

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'September, 2019.

It beats down on the salt and pepper sand and scatters across the deep blue, the last of the sun. I catch her then, riding the crest of a wave, crying out — calling me, arms in the air, throwing herself forwards. I leave behind my Coca-Cola and pack of Lambert & Butler on the towel and run after her, before it’s too late.'

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(Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash)