Inkwell sleeplessness

The Inkwell The Inkwell

S l e e p l e s s n e s s

We are pleased to welcome you to The Inkwell, PublishED’s semes-

terly literary publication. As a society, PublishED aims to encourage a creative and constructive literary dialogue for all. We hold regular readings, writing workshops and society socials to allow writers to share and reflect upon their work. We have also collaborated with The Talbot Rice Gallery and the University of Edinburgh’s Literature Society with various events throughout the year. Our team is very proud to present this issue of The Inkwell. In reading this magazine, you are helping us in our aim, and we thoroughly hope you enjoy doing so.

Marianne

Editor-in-Chief General Editor Poetry Editor Prose Editor Drama Editor Copy Editor Head of Design Web Editor President Vice President Secretary Treasurer Social/ Events Radio Broadcasters

Kimberley Webster Mika Cook Clea Skopeliti Ella Patrick Pauline Jaccon Rosanna Marshall Tess Glen Jemma Hoolahan Marianne Wilson Laura Lynes Snigdha Koirala Saskia Solomon Erin Gleeson Pratyusha Prakash & Isabel Wood

Cover art Rachel Donaldson 1

As the day fades into night and the sun changes shifts with the moon, we

feel uneasy at the thought of going to bed. Of trying to sleep peacefully, if at all, in a world such as this. We sit, we stand, we walk around our flats with our insomnia ridden minds working overdrive, trying to find a solution to our unhappiness, and to the world’s unhappiness, and we come up blank because we’re sleep deprived and agonized at the unjustness of the world we’re forced to live in. We didn’t ask to be born. Yet we’re told we’re fortunate because we’re sitting here, reading this magazine, with our flat white and pre-sliced bagel toasting quietly in the midst of all the noise that is outside, coming out of speakers and in our minds.

But we try to tell that old enemy of unrest, of sleeplessness, goodbye.

Whilst we sit, and crack a smile and there’s hope in our eyes, and we believe, we can make a difference.

Though this issue of the Inkwell takes a darker turn than usual, we hope to give a voice to those late night writers and a place for those sleepless thoughts to be.

Kimberley

2

Vishwani Chauhan 3

Rising May the blinking fairy lights of rush hour traffic lull you Into a false sense of security And wake you with colours of red, amber and Car horns blearing quietly as you Take yourself back to the place you call A flat May the smell of cooking pasta stir when you Open the door and Traipse with slow limbs, wandering A way through corridors of soft carpet And broken locks and tired Doors May low murmurs from laptop screens Of crime programmes, reality shows of porn stars And heavy bangs from loud, loud upstairs neighbours Make you wish you were elsewhere, But still There May freshly washed pillows whisper words of Love and thoughts of Rising; the two things that you Hope for in the library That you visit when you feel Like giving in May the hands of sleep steal you Away And hold you in its slutty arms, Close to its chest As you fall away into dreams of success

Jen Coughlan 4

You Can’t Catch Me Life can often be attributed to the weighing up between one bad decision or another. The city will kill you if you’re not careful, cardboard shelter adjacent to a Sainsburys, pretending to be an ex-serviceman to extrapolate a few filthy coins; a Walter Mitty in rags and placebos. Please don’t look me in the eye, I might infect you with my poverty, so obvious and intentional, beneath humanity with a duvet strung across shoulders like fallen wings. I’ll flap for your restoration, dead feathers foaming at my mouth, justifying the ways of man to God, directing the Archangels to a landing strip just off the coast of Skye. Complementary packets of peanuts are not included, corruption always begins at the site of denial for what is to be expected of you, Beelzebub was more than furious when he heard there were hand towels, purposefully not warmed.

My previous co-habitator had left under somewhat dubious circumstances, fleeing before the dawn light, leaving several bags of sick in his room but taking all of my salad spoons. To suggest I was desperate for a roommate was an understatement, I’d spent all my savings that Christmas on expensive, passive aggressive presents for my rural family that I didn’t particularly care for. I placed an ad on Craigslist and heard nothing for three days, I got rid of the sick smell that was lingering in the hallway and bought some new spoons for my salad. That night I tossed a sublime Waldorf with toasted croutons and prayed.

The next morning I had a reply in my box which raised alarm bells of a delicious inclination. A Mr. Red Heron had enquired about the vacant room, could supply me with six months’ rent upfront in cold, hard cash but could not, under any circumstances, provide references on his prior lodgings. He was to arrive at six o’ clock sharp with a bundle of Queenie lolly in a duffel bag. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and put on a tea and biscuit spread; Viennese whirls and custard creams were stacked high like an impermeable citadel; everything still to squander with belligerent cannonballs. I sat at my table smelling the wafers, occasionally licking a couple and thinking about all the rat traps and dried apricots I would buy with the extra capital coming my way. This might have been just about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me, only criminals used duffel bags and sometimes they carried loud knives and threatened people for the contents of their abdomens.

When I opened the door to my new roomie, I knew at once that the biscuit citadel had been a dreadful mistake. I was now in a form of deeply marinated panic; I imagine that the last time I was this distressed was when I crawled out of my unambitious Mother’s furry triangle and found the world on fire.

5

Being a very well informed baby it only took me till my first feed till I knew all about the Gulf war and that black stuff which, contrary to its name, should never be put on salad. When I was swaddled, I had correctly predicted the financial crash of ‘08 and told my nurses about the dangers of subprime mortgages for the following decade. They did not thank me but should have.

The Viennese whirl monstrosity was a wart-callous upon my tablecloth and heart, I began to throw the biscuits in between the gaps in my sofa and under the shaggy rug by the fire. I hid them up the lampshade and behind the drapes in the curtains. There was crumbs everywhere and it looked like a custard cream massacre, limp bodies were strewn in fours corner and nobody was breathing. Mr. Red Heron entered the room, a duffel bag balanced in his tiny hand and let out a tremendous and blood-curdling scream.

‘You sir, are an evil man with genocidal tendencies. This place, this house, is nothing but a mass grave,’ he cried, straightening one of his jelly buttons, that had come loose in the kerfuffle. ‘All I can smell is death and unsalted butter.’

‘I’m so sorry Mr. Heron, it’s just I never imagined that you were-’ ‘Were what? Slightly different to everyone else?’

‘Well, a Gingerbread Man. If I had known, I would never have dreamt of serving you…’

‘--The skulls and baked skeletons of my fallen comrade distant third cousins?’

* After our initial skirmish concerning the murder of his extended family, Mr. Heron and I managed to put aside our differences and enjoyed a pleasurable evening of casual drinking and drug taking whilst debating Hume’s ‘A Treatise of Human Nature.’ When we grew tired of being sceptical we invited a couple of lowbrow but well meaning prostitutes over that Red, he had asked me to call him Red, knew from the dilapidated sink estate across yonder road. They were glittery pauper princesses that tasted like titillation and strawberries. One of them complemented me on my cushions that a fat aunt had left in a will gone futile with age. I confessed all my secrets when she took off my trousers. I was disappointed to hear they weren’t any good in comparison to many of the others she’d been told.

6

In fact, she’d already heard three exceptional secrets before she’d brushed her teeth that morning. I pondered upon the enigma of Red and quickly realised it was a story chipped with a great sadness. His face may have permanently registered a white iced grin but real tragedy lay just behind the decadent scallop of the baker’s nozzle.

It was probably less than a week when I gathered Red’s excess was on the wrong side of recreational. I’d gone into his room to drain the radiator of midnight water and found him in a stupor, a semi-circle of bloody needles round his infinitesimal body. Stepping over him and completed my task of knob turning, weeping silent tears for the Gingerbread Man I didn’t quite know.

When he finally exited his opium den I decided to challenge him, sporadic David and Charlie nights were fine, even expected in a city such as ours, but heroin, hepatitis C and solidarity was a step too far: ‘twas bags of sick mixed with calamity in a frothed, molly-cocktail. Once gulped civilization’s batch is forever spoiled, some dog-throat apprentice added self raising flour but did not think to sift it, the clumps of agency have grown together in the oven of despair, nuking all chances of resolution through the application of little care.

Red tried to unsuccessfully explain his reliance on burnt brown liquid and I kindly asked him to please not use my new salad spoons.

Turns out my dear friend was a fugitive; he’d escaped from his creator’s shop as soon as he realised that he was going to culminate his life being digested in an unforgiving stomach. He’d been on the run ever since, people were looking high and low for him, he was a wanted biscuit and there was a price on his Gingerbread head. He confessed that he had stolen the bakery’s summer takings and had been living a meaningless existence of underworld hedonism: empty sugar, empty women and collapsed veins.

Who was I to judge, there was no God listening for men like Red - lambs to slaughter and thrust onto meat hooks. I’d started refusing all accompaniments with my cups of tea to support his position on biscuit annihilation and had lost three pounds as a result.

Perhaps we knew we were waltzing on borrowed strides, it was only a matter of time before they kicked down our door and put us both in different sized handcuffs. I urged Red to run, but he refused to flee, the fight had all but gone out from him.

7

We emptied the duffel bag of remaining cash and had a most licentious five-day bender; I read out the entirety of ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ whilst Red grappled with three ladies of the night covered in Vaseline, four tabs in. Artistically speaking, it was a resounding success, we painted the flat with such a furious pointillism, crumbs of spectral brilliance lay scattered in every possible groove and crevice.

We languished just beneath the heaven of our own division, singular entities, motherless and inert in our pursuit of pleasure: the future and past was something that happened to others. We propelled paint into the stratosphere and played Russian Roulette one time too many, leaving the corpse in the kitchen and shutting the door to forget.

That final day Red began to blur at the edges, it may have been because I’d been awake for 120 hours but I could see the cracks beginning to form and the light was shining through; he had already started turning into an angel before he left our flat-earth on his own terms. He asked if I would be with him at the end and I implored him to reconsider his finality.

Having been unable to change his mind, we retreated to the sanctuary of his bedroom and I watched as he tested for the bluest vein, one last time.

I presented him with my cleanest and most expensive salad spoon and encouraged him to complete the process in style. It was easier than falling asleep. I held his hand as he shook and foamed at the mouth, the white icing smile sliding downwards mottled with yellow bile. Red was now free of the world that had never given him so much of a chance, he lay still and peaceful, the oven-warmth of him still captive in my palm.

The police found us in that position and there was a mighty bit of explaining to do. Drug paraphernalia, David Hume and blood scattered the walls and floors of the flat and there was a dead woman in the kitchen with half her head missing. I got nine months for possession but luckily most of the more serious crimes I blamed on the dead Gingerbread Man. I returned to my rural Mother when I was released from prison and she didn’t like my new cellblock tattoos and buzz cut. But she understood, the capital had ruined me, all the proximity and crowds had altered my brain chemistry with city-slicker oil. I didn’t find a stable occupation back home; nobody would employ someone linked quite tangible to a death orgy. So I spent most of my time breaking into people’s houses to riffle in their biscuit tins. I would rescue the friends of Red and release them in the wild, pausing to let them listen to the story of how I once met a fellow very much like them; how we both began together and how we both came to a very unfortunate end.

Rebecca Sandeman 8

Helen Redman 9

Ghost in the Temple In a place where they never calibrated the time a white man’s pocket watch struck quarter to nine.

The temple bell shone yellow as if with fear,

as if a siren, a pamphleteer,

against the moon, which colonised the blackness of its space, tonight smiling only with half of its face.

Bare feet clapped up cold stairs of stone with hot pace.

She lunged to the altar, lit by fire, poison tied to her waste, in a vial, just in case.

The air was tropical but frigid in the manner of a cucumber: swollen but soft, green but cold.

She was becoming a little too old for a woman.

The idols could see it, where the flickering lamp lies, watching her forbiddingly with painted white eyes, the consciousness of the universe in bronze disguise.

His otherness was his allure, his blonde was his mark, at first just a harmless silhouette in the dark, a tall but lean square in between two pillars hoisting a roof that sheltered the holy, he penetrated the temple, in footsteps, and slowly, and without removing his shoes.

10

Immediately she turned and in the lamplight that burned she found him,

colourless but not pellucid, coloured only in his eyes.

He spoke neatly, in some tidy language, no tidy language ever did justice to the heart, she said and she always spoke from her heart with the casual, striking poetry of her nation, so he gifted her a train station.

Before doing so he held her with a holding, which turned into a grabbing, her kohl bled black dripping down flustered red cheeks, which he saw glossed like chocolate in their burning sanguine brown.

Her eyes rolled back and remained there in their haze, which hasn’t cleared yet after all of these days— The sunrise is saffron, the quenched lamp smells of theft, her ash-smothered face wakes up to what is left— Disarrayed silk, spilled on her, tattered from a night of war, shattered vial, undrunk venom, leaked across the marble floor.

12.30am/ 9/7/16 11

Vishwani Chauhan

12

Vishwani Chauhan

in 2017 I call my mother every Sunday. I can no longer tell if she’s tired; it’s more that she is constant. An hour into the call, she knows that I am tired and tells me to go to bed.

I call my dad. It’s the third time since I left that I’ve phoned him not on Sunday. That I’ve phoned him without my mother.

We are both tired but for different reasons.

He stays awake driving down to Washington DC or to the airports after ten hour workdays.

I stay awake watching it all change on a six hour delay and wondering what will happen between now- 2 a.m. - and when I wake up.

It’s never nothing.

Today I wake up to see posts about swastikas painted on the inside of our school buses. I thought I had never faced discrimination. I wonder how my brother feels.

Reyna Cohen 13

Vishwani Chauhan

While dicing vegetables If the cut on my wrist had creeped 5 more centimetres to the right I would not have to see the sight Of you holding someone else’s hand.

I would only have to endure 5 more minutes Of failing to understand Why you didn’t love me.

I would be transported to another land Where you might have At least Tried.

How pathetic am I To contemplate you In a fantasy where I’ve died.

Sarya Wu 14

An Unhealthy App-etite.

ONE. <Brrrup> That unmistakeable sound. My phone glows complicitly announcing a new message. Lying in bed I trace the amber glow from my phone across the ceiling. The world goes on as I try to sleep. Restless, I grab my phone to see who has messaged me. <John, 32> <profile picture of a bearded chin in green light> Hi I am dazedly hypnotised by the pulsing cursor on my phone’s screen. I watch the cursor throb within its elliptical grey mouth, permanently open, waiting to receive. Not so much a glory hole but a postal slot with a tongue licking the side of its mouth, tasting the air around it.

What you up to

No punctuation. *tsk* Not much, tbh.

Can’t sleep.

Kl kl You not going to XXL Supposed to go with mates later Was going to give it a miss this year.

But I might head out later.

Say hi if you see me.

Kl kl You do the same You got a better pic tho?

Yeah soz <pic sent> Hmm. *sad face* Still not the clearest pic.

Too close up and still in green lighting.

Taken on a work’s night out probably.

Nice.

Cheers When you be there Couple of hours.

Need a shower and I might grab a drink before.

Kl kl Alright mate See u later 15

Cheers I’m Jack.

John

I know.

Kl kl TWO.

“Weekend or evening pass?”

“Just tonight”.

“I.D? That’s lovely. There you go, hen. Shall I pit it oan fur ye?”

“Nah, you’re fine”.

“Have fun…” I feel his eyes continue to watch me as I awkwardly enter the venue through the swing doors.

Should have gone for that drink somewhere else first, the place is half empty. I head straight to the bar. Now that I’m in conspicuous activity I can survey the thin crowd. One eye scanning for people I know, the other lingering over those I don’t. I coyly avoid their returned glances, never returning their gaze. The expert game-player.

“Hiya, did we chat online?” I didn’t see him approach from the dance floor. He wears a black wrestling singlet with yellow piping and 14-hole black DM boots. The singlet is at the limit of its tensile strength and the areas of fabric barely cover any of his flesh. His cock and balls are compressed so tightly they are a walnut below his belly. From his neck a stream of sweat begins to find its way through his scant chest hair, between the rolling hills of his tits and over the considerable mound of his belly. His face is frozen in an expression suggesting he is always arriving at his own surprise party. I can also smell him. I’m sure some ‘daddy’ told him his natural smell was horny probably 5 years ago when he was thinner, fresher and still reeked of youth. It repulses me. He furtively glances down and up my body but I do not react. I attempt to keep eye contact, hoping he notices my disinterest in checking him out. “Nae worries, babe”. He saunters in the general direction of the toilets, belly and arse undulating as he moves.

The venue gets busier and I find it difficult to stand without being jostled by a variety of body types in various states of undress to-ing and fro-ing from the dancefloor. They smear past me, everyone is happy, I am out of my depth. Only alcohol will help. Back at the bar I check my phone. No signal. I stand alone surround be people.

Then I see him, chatting to his friends a few meters away. Not the usual type I would go for but youth trumps type these days. Early 30s, shaven head, dark tight beard, generic clothes, short. Very short.

16

“Remember me?”

Shit. *confused look* “Didn’t we chat online?”

As I stare at him praying for recollection a haze of green light begins to illuminate his face. Ah. “Ha. Right. John, yeah?”

“Yeah… Jack?”

“Yup”. Saved.

He begins to talk. It does not stop. A tsunami of information, details and descriptions, comes flowing out of him. All his questions he answers himself. I smile, nod and look for an opening. I’ve had a few beers now and I’m in the mood to talk too. But his talk is frantic and continuous. Every detail is critical and important, nothing can be said without impassioned emphasis. Coke? MDMA? Something… He leans in for a kiss. Our mouths meet and he chews at my lips with the same ferocity as his stream of consciousness. It is unpleasant but I am caught off guard and I let him eat me.

John pulls back, “I better be careful” he says teasing, “Andy can get a bit jealous. Not with you, God no, he’ll go off in a huff looking for someone else to snog”. I’ve learned not to judge, or even understand, relationships. Couples make up their own rules and codes of agreement that keeps them together; forms of individuality that exist within union.

Knowing how to proceed here is another game that is played, where the rules are never stated but you learn through mistakes and assurances.

How much I am prepared to engage with this game depends a lot on alcohol and desperation. Tonight, not so much.

“Want to hook up sometime?”

“Sure, why not...” What? Why did I just agree to this? Just. Say. No. He gives me his phone open at contacts. I type in my name and number. With any luck he’ll forget in the morning.

THREE. A Scotch pie is a rare thing of beauty; especially as an unexpected treat for the walk home in the early morning. Shimmering like an oasis, a trestle table strains under the weight of several pallets of freshly baked pies. The selection is traditional: indistinguishable grey meat or macaroni. The doorman is now the ‘Piemaster’. “Compliments ay the hoose,” he says with a sleekit grin as he hands me a pie in a napkin. Again I feel his eyes follow me as I begin to make my way home. Other clubs are emptying and the drunken hordes are streaming onto the street, singing, screaming, shouting; the echo is deafening. I notice the nostrils flare on the people I pass. They stop, silent, momentarily frozen in a lost memory.

My aroma, whether flesh in pastry or flesh in clothing, could single me out for challenge. I pick up speed and wolf down the blood temperature pie in the hope I will escape before they emerge from their static stupor.

My phone pings. Unknown number.

<Remember me>

Question or instruction? *grumpy face*

Scott Baxter 17

Emeline Beroud 18

Never Forgotten.

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.’

Laurence Binyon – ‘For The Fallen’ It was a cold, dark, winters night and in the village of Little Banbury, a small hamlet on the Devonshire coast, a solitary man stood in a deserted square, his head bowed. A harsh wind blew through the houses and damp rust coloured leaves tumbled softly from doorsteps, as if playing in the breeze. The day was November 11th, and bright, blood-red wreaths lay on the memorial before him. He stared sorrowfully at the names engraved on the stone, and a tear began to form in his pain-filled eye; friends, brothers, fathers. Gone.

It had been the same for the past twenty years. Joe would leave his now ramshackle and dilapidated cottage and move his ancient limbs to this very spot, late at night, while everybody else was sleeping. He would think of those he had lost; of the 4th Battalion and of his brother, who now lay in peace, in Normandy. Joe would delve into the world of the past and relive the most terrible moments of his life just once every year. His silent tribute to the martyrs of the last Great War. Through the darkness, in front of the Baker’s shop, two lamp-like eyes came to bear on him. The cat padded slowly towards him, tilting its head.

Joe had had a cat. A long time ago, when laughter still filled the house, he had cared for a proud and elegant tabby, which nestled in his armchair in front of the roaring fire and rubbed its sleek fur against his leg. A distant, distorted memory. A further reminder of the past.

The cat, like everything else in his life, had died, bringing with it clouds of despair and the tides of war. The laughter had disappeared, being replaced with dark looks and constant argument. Tempers were frayed and fear was never far from his parents’ eyes. In the end, both Joe and his older brother George had joined up, walking from their little cottage to downmarket Torquay and the library being used as the makeshift recruitment office. They needn’t have done. Within the month, ‘Military Service’ had been declared - all able-bodied men were conscripted to the armed forces, and shipped to France.

19

Barely trained men had guns pushed into their hands and were told they must go and fight for Britain. A generation immersed in mud, dying slowly, surrounded by rats, and infested with lice.

Tears began to stream openly down Joe’s gnarled and weather-beaten face. He could see the men who matched the names on the memorial standing before him. Nervous smiles and smart uniforms standing to attention in neat rows. He could see himself, handsome back then, laughing with the lads at some forgotten joke. Joe rarely laughed any more.

It seemed he had left part of himself back in Normandy, ready to die a watery death in the pools of stagnant filth that surrounded the trenches.

It was not fair what had happened. The blundering Generals had ended the lives of so many in Picardy nearly sixty years ago. The bloodiest battle the British had ever seen - one and a half million dead. The Battle of the Somme. Joe could only remember parts of his war, now that he was sinking into old age. The doctors told him it was shell shock and that the endless gunfire and explosions had caused his brain to break down, yet Joe could remember the 1st of July like it was yesterday. They had been ordered ‘over the top’, George had been mown down by strafing machine gun fire and Joe’s life had descended into oblivion.

People often talk of ‘the best day of their life’ and refer to children being born, or marrying their soul mate, yet for Joe, more important was the worst day. He had to write the letter home to his mother and father containing that dread news. Something broke inside them when they read it. They had never been the same again. Joe’s father had been seen the day after, walking to the sea in his best shirt and tie. Friends and neighbours had wondered what he was doing, dressed for church and traipsing through muddy fields with purpose in his long strides.

George had always been the favourite, apple of his father’s eye and seen as the future for the family. After all, he was the elder, the more successful, the more charming. Joe could only watch on from his shadow. They had begged him not to go to war, to stay and work in the tailor shop with his father, and his departure had filled both parents with fear, what if something happened to him? It had not been a surprise then what father had done when their fears were confirmed. He loved George so deeply, with him gone, what had he got left? He had stepped from a cliff to crash onto the jagged rocks below, his body disappearing out to sea.

20

For years his father’s face had haunted Joe’s dreams, expressions of misery, regret and despair splashed from ear to ear. The man would exclaim his brother’s brilliance and question his failures. He would then watch the father who had shunned him jump into the endless blackness that lay below, and wake up, drenched in cold sweat and panting from the experience. The landscape of that day filled him with dread, the huge expanse of choppy sea, the high cliffs that few hikers dared climb, the sharp, deadly rocks below.

His mother survived just long enough to collect George’s Military Medal, awarded to him in honour of his bravery. It seemed she just wasted away, abandoned by the husband and son she loved so much, and left in a world full of violence and hate. All three had graves at the local village cemetery, yet only one was occupied and it was left to Joe to maintain the granite headstones hidden in a quiet corner. Not for Joe were the loud, public remembrance services. His grief was personal, and he preferred to observe it alone, and to grieve for all of the victims of the war. He had experienced first hand that the casualties of war extended far beyond those killed or injured on the field of battle.

This was why, every year without fail. Joe would visit the memorial, paying tribute not only to those who fought in the war, but all those who suffered from it. His family, like many others, had been torn asunder and Joe led a life of solitude inflicted on him by a single German machine gunner.

He felt he owed it to himself and everyone else not to forget, and to show this respect, if only for ten minutes every year.

The wind began to blow once more and rain began to spatter the frozen ground as a dog barked far in the distance. Again the leaves rose high into the air, filling Joe’s vision with orange and brown. Silently, Joe replaced his hat and adjusted his coat, before turning from the memorial and walking into the rising mist. He allowed the memories filling his head to slip into the breeze as he let the night embrace him. The dark figure that was the old man disappeared as it walked trudged monotonously home.

‘We will remember them’

Stephen Waite 21

Tabby Carless Frost 22

Sinking in Sleeplessness There is very little peace In the water And I am stretched out And I am Cavern â&#x20AC;&#x201C; like, Gaping and grinning Like some mad dog with Little rolling eyes.

I am paddling gently, As I cannot reach the sides, Their walls stretch further than my pink new-born fingers ever could.

No one stands over my pool to haul me out, And there is no warmth in this bright and stretched â&#x20AC;&#x201C; tight place.

I am merely bobbing, Cooking, scooping, and turning, I can feel my pulse flatten against my stomach, and it sickens me.

I am not panicked, but I am straining, I loop and tread through old and faded thoughts, There is nowhere else for me to go.

Grins sagging loose, Body, catching in the water And rising limp like a knot of hair to the surface.

And in all the corners of my body, Now an itchy damp heat rises as I turn and sink and sweep My arms through this stagnant blue, Sometimes escapable, more times heavy.

Taking my head, Smothering my eyes when they squeeze shut, Even my little lips when I beg in bubbles.

And then I remember, Returning hopelessly, sweaty, to my keeper: There is no comfort in a concrete square Where a bed should be.

Lataetia Mcevilly-Duncan

23

Tabby Carless Frost

Hamlet Heavy lids, refracted light, Endless spiels of pointless shite.

To get, or not get out Of bed: Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that what Hamlet said?

Lorenne Brogan 24

A Mother’s Love I saw her for the second time in a records store south of Old Town, near the Jazz, Blues and Standards section, leafing past Glen Miller and Thelonius Monk. She was dressed in beige and had her hair drawn back like I never had. Wire glasses and leather boots. Bangles on her wrist. She was with friends, and that made me happy. They called her Lara. It sounded pretty when they said it. I wish we had named her that.

It was October and it was cold, and I had gone inside because snow was falling and I didn’t feel like walking home. I used to come into Kaffie’s a lot those days. It was a small music shop tucked between a grocer’s and an Oxfam that looked hand-me-down itself. They didn’t have many CDs then, and I like to think they still don’t, but they had plenty of cassettes. Rows and rows of empty plastic cartridges with their cover inserts missing, replaced by cardstock cutouts with album names scrawled on in sharpie. They had a listening station in the back behind red drapes. The headphones were shoddy but worked ok if you twisted the jack just right.

When things were moving too fast, I would close those drapes and listen to old American standards and pretend I was anywhere but Edinburgh.

I liked Fats Waller and Charlie Parker. He always liked the Ink Spots. We listened to their single “If I Didn’t Care” in the hospital right after it happened. He had smiled, and I fell asleep to it. When I woke, he was gone.

It was a feeling I hadn’t grown accustomed to yet. He would’ve stayed longer, he told me later, on the phone. But I looked so small in that bed without her. Small, and fragile. And so he left.

When I saw her standing in Kaffie’s so many years later, the place that had always been my place, I didn’t recognize her. At least, not at first. But there was something about her that kept my gaze and held it. I stood behind the stacks of Contemporary and Classics, and I listened to her and her friends and watched the way she laughed and talked and curled the corner of her mouth when she smiled. And it reminded me of someone I knew and didn’t know, and it made me feel something I can’t rightly describe. It was like seeing something blurry up close. She saw me watching and looked over. She didn’t recognize me. But I guess they never do.

How could they? Time changes us all in different ways. It must, I think.

Because before long we’re not the same person we were and thought we would be.

I remembered how my cheeks grew hot and red, like I had been caught doing something I shouldn’t. I made myself busy and moved to a different section of the store, far enough away that I couldn’t hear what they were saying but close enough to see her still.

25

They stayed a while and searched the albums and found little. Lara was the only one that bought anything. She stayed behind—maybe to pay, I think—and the rest went out. I was standing where she had been not long ago, touching the Glen Miller cassette she had touched, but finding nothing familiar. She found me, and asked me a question I wish I could’ve answered another way: “Do I know you?”

“Sorry?”

“I think I must know you,” she said. “Or have seen you around some place or other. Maybe you just have one of those faces. You know? One of those faces that everyone thinks they know but don’t actually know.

Are you sure we haven’t met somewhere? Sorry, I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” “No,” I said. “We haven’t met.”

“Oh,” she looked disappointed. “My name is Lara. Now we have.”

I shook her hand, and it felt warm and different from my own. “Beth,” I said. “My name is Beth.”

“I thought maybe if I heard your name I’d remember. But nope. Not even a little bit. I don’t know any Beths. Would you believe it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. You’ll give them all a good name, won’t you?”

I smiled, but it hurt. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

“Cool,” she pointed to the tattoo on my arm where the tracks had been.

“What does your tattoo mean?”

I unconsciously lowered my sleeves. “It’s an apple.”

“I mean, I know what it is, but what does it mean?”

“I didn’t really think about it. It just kind of happened.”

She looked confused by this. “You know those things stay around forever, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I try to forget about it, but then I see it, and I remember all over again.”

‘You could get it removed.”

26

“No,” I said. “It’d hurt too much to go through that again.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. The thought of needles or burning or whatever they have to do to get it off, it’s enough to make me shiver,” she laughed as if the thought of shivering was ridiculous in itself. “It’s pretty rad at least. The apple, I mean.”

“Thanks, Lara.”

Lara looked at me, and there was a moment of recognition, faint and then gone. She smiled. “Well, it was nice to meet you— “ “Beth.”

“That’s right. Lara. That’s me. Anyway, it was nice to meet you, Beth, but I should be going. They’ll all be wondering, and that’s no good for any of them.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What?” she looked confused. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“To keep you waiting,” I said. “From your friends. I’m sorry.”

She laughed. It was a good laugh. “You don’t need to apologize. I talked to you,” she paused, thinking, trying to place something that was out of reach. She blushed. “Anyway, like I said, off I go.”

“Goodbye.”

“Oh don’t say that. I really hate that, you know. Say, ‘I’ll see you later.’”

“I’ll see you later,” I said, but I hoped that I wouldn’t.

And she was gone. I remember standing in the store by myself surrounded by those empty cassettes and faded music posters. Something by the Kinks was playing over the stereo. My skin itched, and I was crying.

“Are you looking for something?” the old man behind the counter had asked.

I said yes. Yes, I was looking for something. But I didn’t understand what it was, and it was too late anyway. Wasn’t it? He said I should probably leave until I figured that out. I agreed. And so I left.

Nick Anthony 27

Vishwani Chauhan 28

The Dreamer One night I dreamt of a dark blue sea.

Its waves lapping on a sandy shore.

Its horizon touching the starry sky.

And at its centre, a single white sail.

On that boat a sailor sung.

Words which threatened the crests of waves.

While in the cabin, her lover slept.

His dream my own, in perfect cycle.

Morgan Powell 29

Emily Lowes 30

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