Creative Writing Anthology 2024

The Smoking Rose

Suffolk One Anthology 2024

Thanks

Thanks to Nova Heasman for the cover art, and the name of the anthology.

Thanks to everyone who attended any of the creative writing sessions. Every person who attended made positive contributions. Huge thanks to those who attended regularly – you all shaped the group into an incredibly supportive and fun place to be. Your enthusiasm and originality has been amazing.

Thanks to everyone who ran a session, or maybe even two! This year we have had more sessions run by students than ever before. You have inspired each other to be bold, adventurous and take risks. Special thanks to Pete for all of the occasions that he gave up his time and made the journey in just for us. Every one of his sessions brought us new ways of thinking about writing and stoked the creative fires.

Thanks to everyone who shared their work – it is always a brave thing to do.

Thanks to CJ & Izzi for Jeremy and the badges – you cemented our identity!

Home

What is home?

It isn’t that house, or the one you live in now, Or the one you lived in down by the beach all those years ago.

What is home?

It isn’t those albums or those teddies, Or the boxes in the cupboard of a life gone past.

What is home?

It isn’t those people, those neighbours, Or the “friends” you see each morning.

What is home?

Maybe it isn’t a tangible place, but a feeling, Or those rocks you’ve hiked miles to get to.

What is home?

Maybe it’s the open skies, the road, Or the cobbles that slip under your feet.

What is home?

Maybe you don’t really know.

Maybe you need to find out.

So you take your camera and you go to find out,

What is home?

Izzi Creamer

Historical Events

I stand before myself a room of historical events, stories that speak to you from Rome all the way to here, stories that only appear as rumours. Are they true or are they all lies?

Leah Sadler

Womanhood

Women are seductive creatures, the object of man's deepest desires

Feeding the wars that men create, and they hate women

Like troy and Helen, Aphrodite, and Adonis.

Women are witches, in every smirk every dry summer

It is them who cause the storm one summers night

Rattling the windows

Burn them

Drown them

Force them to marry, to stay the silent watchful eye

Amelia Bloomfield

*Please*

Maybe one day we will have a world,

Where what you are is what you’re called,

Rather than what the next tyrant thinks you should be.

Maybe there will come a day,

When we won’t be spoken of in the same breath as abusers, When our faces won’t be shrouded in your ignorant hate, When “eight times as likely” becomes not at all.

Because we are human – just like you:

Not a monster, but your child;

Not a disgusting object, but your sibling;

Not a vile creature, but a cashier, a teacher, the person you passed yesterday who let you pet their dog.

But you don’t see us that way, do you?

You don’t think us monstrous, but we are playing it up a bit,

We’re being a bit too whiney about the world hating us,

We’re too aggressive when called what we’re not.

Just shut up and listen.

Please. Cass Herrieven

Emily Sliwka

Away from the ocean

When I was alone, I went to the sea

The waves kept me calm and comforted me

Whenever I took a stroll on the sand

The kind gentle breeze was holding my hand

The waves wiped away my salty soft tears

They kept me safe tucked away from my fears

For so many years I stared at the blue

So many years until then I found you

I’m never alone with love in my heart

He keeps me warm, from the sea I can part

Charlie Bowden Smith

Now That I am Dead, I Know Everything

It’s as if my life flashed before my eyes. Deliberately. Everything that happened to me since the day of birth was recorded over that whirled round as if I was re-living my previous life, recalling significant moments I remember taking, moments where I forgotten they happened, and others leaving me to question if they really did happen. Was that really me? Was I really that kind of person back then?

Specific parts I can see how those motives turned myself to who I was, other parts leaving me puzzled on where did I decide to become that individual. Should I query if that’s all of me? But I don’t, because I already know that obviouslyunchanging answer.

Leah Sadler

Flower Bed

She looked around the living room as she began to knit, her shaking hands threading the wool together, intertwining it. It was almost unconscious, like breathing, she scarcely had to think about it, let alone look at her hands as they carried the movement out. The room was bare, she felt connected to it, in a way, to its absence of anything sentient save for herself. It was made up of furniture and the odd insignificant, nonessential item which had been left untouched for years, and now just rested while they gathered dust. She sat in the same chair day after day, the others had grown too calloused from their perpetual lack of use. As she knit, letting the wool embrace itself to create the cream cardigan she’d been working on for the past month, she found herself longing for another pair of ears and eyes, another mouth. She longed for another heart and another set of lungs. She longed for another body to soften the chair that stood opposite her, to soften her muscles, to soften her. She didn’t like to let her mind wander, to let herself walk down the mental path created over her 70 years. It was cracked and weeds seeped through and infected it. She never removed them, she’d tried on a few occasions but it only ever made them grow larger and consume her thoughts, killing all the tranquil flowers she carefully grew. The more she let herself walk down the path, the more weeds she noticed, they drew her in more than the flower beds, they were hypnotic, brainwashing her into a daydream. She thought about all the opportunities she’d had at having another half, she thought about their long silky hair, and how she caused their lipstick smiles to curl downwards into a frown. She felt guilt pool in her stomach, gnawing at its lining. She let it travel up her body, down her veins and into her fingertips, forcing her to work faster, to transfer it into her work, to make a cardigan of guilt that she could hang up on the back of her bedroom door, to retire it.

Ruby Allman

Your embrace is forbidden

Your touch warmer than the biting breeze flowing through the rifts of this grove

This mountain, this home

What we could have had

This decade of lies

You didn’t want it, Resigned to a life

Of your daughter’s laughter, and your wife’s cold stare Of rusty fishing rods,

And the remains of a feeling, of my hand in your hair

All we have now is the memories of us

Your jacket in mine

Our love never lost.

Nova Heasman

Cassie Murray

*Unfinished Business*

It was a cold June’s day when Jon had finally decided that he had-had enough. There had been something keeping him for so long, but for all that time, he couldn’t work it out. He now knew what to do.

The ground grew cold around his steps as he followed that scent of overcooked lamb to Martin’s door. The sun shone with all its might as he raised an icy hand to the doorbell. He rang it.

“One second!” Martin’s frantic voice called from inside. Jon heard something fall over – Martin was the clumsiest person he knew. Only now did he notice the smile he was wearing. Only now did a tear leave his eye.

Martin opened the door in his usual fumbling manner. He looked right through Jon, confused as to his supposedly empty porch. Jon looked into his face, taking in every detail that he didn’t want to forget. He didn’t know what would happen after he did what he went there to do, but he refused to forget Martin’s face. His eyes. His smile.

It was just when he was about to close the door that he didn’t hear Jon finally say, “I love you,” as he faded away into the dark.

Cass Herieven

The shadow in the mirror

The shadow in the mirror has gotten closer, I was filled with dread; It shifted unnaturally, as if it were distorted and clearly a danger to me, Strange language came out from it, whispers in the air, like it was contacting the dead.

It reached out to me, clawing, as if it were trying to grab its prey; The figure leaned ever closer, its long tendrils scraping at my knee, The shadow in the mirror has gotten closer, I was filled with dread.

It lunged at me, and suddenly darkness engulfed me, hiding the day; I heard them, the screaming, gunshots, and maniacal laughter, my laughter, it was me! Strange language came out from it, whispers in the air, like it was contacting the dead.

I wake up, sweat drenching from my forehead, and I got on my knees to pray; The shadow in the mirror was me. A different personality. One that killed for glee, The shadow in the mirror has gotten closer, I was filled with dread.

The shadow was connecting to me, as if it were trying to merge. It brought me to lay; The shadow made me twist with pain, as if I were being stabbed by a key, Strange language came out from it, whispers in the air, like it was contacting the dead.

We are one, we want chaos to come to the world, this is the way; We will destroy the world. It has hurt us, so we will hurt it back, no one will be free, The shadow in the mirror has arrived, we are now dread; We speak with strange language, whispers in the air, time to resurrect the dead.

Charlie Wiggins

Chump

The constant silence acts as a background noise which reverberates inside my colleague’s vacant one bedroom brain; the room is rented out briefly for 9-5 weekday functions because how else would they know how to scan and print and copy and fax andThis pathetic creature will soon become my boss and gain a shiny new office to keep his collection of collectible retro cars that are the only things that now give him pleasure after the divorce. I know all about the divorce, I might as well have been inside their marriage, cosied up in their bed. Did you know she cheated on him with her fitness coach? I knew that even before he did. Alas, my job is everyday monotony, taken like a vitamin or supplement for human interaction. I hope to escape it before I metamorphose into a ten-buck tie wearing chump. I probably won’t.

Molly Liddle

Quach

Duck honking noises

Quack. Those apes have boiled down my entire form of vocal communication to one word, “quack”. It’s not even accurate, I don’t ever say that. And the puns, they drive me up the wall, absolutely quackers- crackers even. “Oh why did the duck go to prison?”

“He was dealing quack”

AHAHAHAHAA stupid.

You have never seen a duck in a human prison. We don’t follow your laws, I do whatever the duck I want. You don’t care. A car killed my uncle last week and was there a murder inspection? Noooooo

Quackpots

Charlie Bowden-Smith

Mythology

We see their faces in our day

Their wisdom

Their hatred

Their fear

Their purpose

Stretching down into generations

Seeping into our minds

Stories circulating around time like whispers in a playground

People say they are myths

Are they?

Amelia Bloomfield

Flower Bed 2

She’d never be eighteen again. She looked at herself and came to that realization, as if it were written into the marks on her skin, shouting at her. You’ll never be eighteen again, you’ll never be young again, today is the youngest you can be, until tomorrow. She repeated it like a mantra inside her head, creating a trunk which branched off in different sections of yearning. She’s never wear an over to top gown to prom again, she’d never get dressed up for anything again, unless someone else dies before her, but that’s nothing like getting ready for a party with her friends, with her bright eyes wandering to a specific person she felt more for than she understood at the time. Her eyes were dull now, almost empty. She’d never be eighteen again.

She felt like a rejection of herself, as if she was slipping away, leaking out of her body like water through fingers, pooling at her feet. Her reflection followed her around everywhere, serving as a reminder of her wrongdoings, her decades of mistreatment. Maybe if she was more mellow her skin would be smoother and not dented with experience, bruised with incident, both admirable and despicable. She lived a life of duality, or maybe she was just human, letting angel and evil bleed into each other over her lifetime, creating an ordinary person. Yet, she clung onto her mistakes and forced the guilt of them onto her shoulders like an overpacked backpack which dragged her down. It’s too late to take it off now, to unpack it and put everything back where it belongs, to let it rest. She’ll take it to her grave, she decided in an episode of insomnia at twenty-three, she’ll be buried with it, her skeleton will be wrapped with it, it’ll be the last touch she feels, and she’ll be forced to feel it for eternity, beyond the escape from her life. There won’t be an escape, she decided. Maybe that’s why she feared death as much as she craved it, maybe God would punish her worse than she’s punished herself.

Ruby Allman

I Wish I Knew You Before it Felt Like a Sin

Just by looking at you, I’m activating each of the deadliest sins upon this community. Envy. The way you look and behave makes me reflect that desire in a sickening way, making me come to conclusions about ways I can be like you, but I never get far on those words. Wrath. It resolves me into fury, wanting to release my rage on you in the way that makes you understand why I see the worse in myself. Pride. You see the way I act upon people, I get cocky, expressing my overconfidence when I can’t be arsed to put on a friendly-face that attracts people to befriend, it just resolves my cockyness into the worst kind of brutal honesty. Lust. Love should be exchangeable, not one-sided romance, I desire that want, but that want isn’t neutral if you don’t fall dead for me either. Love as a companion for friendship or romance? I don’t find that association anything priceless I’d want to pay. Sloth. Thinking of love drives me to tiresome thoughts. Thinking of the world pulls myself to wanting to take a deep sleep. Where all my wold is nowadays has been placed by you in front of my small view. You possessing me to play you on my mind 24/7 is such a tiring piece of act throughout my entire day. Gluttony. I don’t think I need to elaborate much on that sin, the thought of myself wanting to eat you up is nauseating. Greed. Maybe in time, just maybe, when things start to make sense, the sins start to adjust themselves around you, possibly begin comprehending the meanings and signs around you. Just maybe. I might end up stealing you away one day.

Leah Sadler

Presence

I find myself to be thinking of thee, As I lay down my head for a night's rest, For once you'd crossed my mind, I'd never sleep, As though I'd been given some form of test. Thoughts of you tempt me from unconscious state, Stir me awake and stir her heart inside, Thoughts of time with you where we share embrace, Or cuddle and kiss while it rains outside. Sometimes I just find peace in your presence, No, I always find peacefulness in you, I remind myself of the present tense, To enjoy listening to your sweet tune, And hope you find comfort in this poem, The same way that I find comfort in him.

Noah Wright

Remembrance

Wandering through the mausoleum, I read the names of everyone who built the walls around our city. I ran my hand along the engravings, feeling every scratch, every crevasse, every carving. Only one thought occupied my mind: did they know?

Did they know what would become of the walls they built? Of the city inside of them? Did they know their names would be immortalised, still to be seen centuries later? Did they care?

I recognised some of the names. Not from any history textbook, nor through wordof-mouth: rather, like a whisper through my consciousness.

Cass Herrieven

Before a bird lands it spreads its wings. To slow itself down

And if you pay attention, for a split second the bird has stopped midair. For that moment, everything slows down and the world takes a break. For that moment it seems the wind halts and the trees stop swaying. For that moment, you can take a breath.

Cassie Murray

Victim

After the seventy-eighth tale with the message of you not existing gets thrown, sharp as daggers, poisonous as a snake’s bite, into your face, you tend to start getting fed up with it all.

The last seventy-seven times today, you caught the tales in your gloves, handled them with care, and disposed of them. As your assailant stared at you, the fires of Hell burning behind their eyes (ironic, as they thought you would be the one to end up there), you would carefully select your own stories and throw them with purpose in return.

That was tiring and you have had enough. So, you become less careful, batting their attacks out of the air and responding with your own, half as venomous as theirs. Of course, now you are the one attacking. Now you are sadistic, villainous, evil. Now they are the victim.

Cass Herrieven

Remember the hibiscus we planted last spring? Well it flowered. There is no other news *

Sent. No response. Along with the other 12 dozen messages I sent for you. With how much information I’ve informed you within the past year, it almost feels like a diary, except it’s not a diary when it’s shared between another person. I made my first load of pancakes from the recipe you taught me without fucking them up this time, I even sent you a picture. I nicked your strawberries that you’ve grown and your syrup that you brought that ended up sitting in the cupboard for weeks. Sorry. Except not really, if it bothered you that much, you would’ve yelled at me in capital letters, or appeared on my doorstep, but no response.

Leah Sadler

*poem by Brian Patten

Faded Memories

CRACK! What!

I sat up so fast that my back made an ominous snapping sound and as blurred scenes swirled around me, I staggered up with sleepy confusion to the creaky tap in the corner where I splashed icy water over my tear-stained eyes. As I watched the rain beat down aggressively against the windowpane, I couldn’t help thinking that memories are like trying to hold water in your cupped hands, as you add more, more slip away.

I can only remember a shadow of my mother now, which seems to fade into the darkness when I try to find her again. I’m sure I still love her even though she died when I was a baby, but can you love someone you never knew? Why cry over someone you just knew existed?

Despite all of my wanderings, I try not to live the “what if” and instead live the “what can my life be?” scenario, but when I find myself in times of trouble and loneliness, I can almost feel her gentle arms around me, her long fingers combing through my hair and her rosy scent close to my heart and all of a sudden, I’m consumed my desperate longing again.

I let my gaze sweep over the room and the couch where I had curled up three hours previously and found the evidence of the sharp noise, which had disturbed me from my slumbers, in the form of a cracked windowpane in the back door.

As I bent down to see how serve the damage was, I saw a ghostly figure peering back at me with hollowed cheeks so white it could have been a skull. The dazzling light from the chandelier bounced off the window glass; it was strangely dark for six o’clock.

Felicity Collett

Grandpa’s story

I love going to the beach

I love the feeling and the cheer and you’d think that on the pier the most beautiful thing would be the sea but that’s where you’d be wrong in fact, what I find most intriguing are the People, their Soul and their reason for Being and in my mind, I am thinking of two people, these two I would find these two and feel the love they had they came here every other month not for the view, but for each other

I heard their laughter and I saw their smiles and that’s when i felt life complete one time though, one heart was racing O, the sun that blissful afternoon was marvellous and elegant which set the perfect mood for him to ask the burning question for him to get down on one knee

I took a breath and asked a question “Will you marry me?” everyday i think. of the memories they made, how I miss those days when they did learn to take it slow life wasn't a big rush we knew we had each other and that would never Change the man went there once more. he was then as old as wine his partner though was missing and I feared the reason why a single tear rolled of his face a tear of anguish and of pain he watched as it neither raised an ocean nor did no-one care he weakly smiled and what he said shall make you think of all your woes “Only here do my tears seem unimportant but this is where they hurt the most.”

Aivaras Vildziunas

Here, now

I sit here and ponder from time to time, Whether that be next to him, Or from afar, How did I end up here? How did I end up with him, here, now? He looks obliviously at his at phone, While I am sat, here, now, Not wanting to let go or leave, Like a dog with a bone. And I wonder as I am sat, here, now, Does he wonder the same as me?

Just as he is right there, now. Sat with me.

Here.

Now.

Noah Wright

What I Love About You in Sarcasm

Yes, I love your dress. I love all the clothes you wear out of your presumably messy yet large wardrobe. I love how you change your hair from curly to straight. I love how you assure yourself that everyone loves you the way they appreciate you back. I love how your energetic voice travels across every single row of rooms down every single corridor. Do you know what else I love

Leah Sadler

Forget me not

Genuine feelings of flames blazing.

With a pink haze cast across my sight,

A stop in time.

Lost abyss of galaxies far and swelling joy.

Entanglement of emotions,

Constant wrapping of safety within them,

Ending or endless.

Time can freeze, the heart can yearn; The heart can learn.

Eyes connect and breath hitches

A gentle interlocking of hands and minds like a forget-me-not they encase me, The purest form of love, The purest form of you.

Enya Parsons

‘The

I soar past my old friends, keeping my distance lest they see me. There was a time when my breath warmed them, melting the icy cage that kept them trapped in starvation. Now, they fear it will only burn.

If they see me, they will run in terror. If I give in to temptation, set my feet down, and tried to say hello, they will stare, confused at my archaic tongue. They will send their spears, their hounds, their might after me. Their might is nothing compared to my own, but I would be compelled to self-defence. I do not want to hurt them. This has happened before.

So, I have resigned myself to watching. Watching their children’s games on the frozen lakes. Watching the hunters return with another frostbitten corpse alongside their meal. I desperately want to help them, but now they despise me. Their blood is kept warm only by the vitriol supplied to them by their leaders’ lies about me.

I don’t understand why this has happened. What did I do wrong?

Cass Herrieven

Hunters in the Snow’ by Pieter Bruegal

#There is no respite in this empty expanse. It is a blinding crystal backdrop that stretches further than seems possible or even fair. My head lolls like a wilting flower as we trudge along the horizon, and my fur boots feel like lead weights: icy and brittle. We are all on our last momentum and etching just a few steps in feels like 10 hours. But somehow, in the bright passing of time, we make it to a break in the forest where my prayers are answered.

Molly Liddle

Rejected

You scribbled me out as if I wasn’t good enough. Like a word you spelt wrong.

Like a word that wasn’t good enough, you thought of a better one. Like a drawing that turned out so bad you couldn’t bear to look at it. So you deface it.

You do that to everything you don’t find good enough, or you just don’t like anymore.

But never a neat crossing out, never polite. A chaotic mess of scrawling.

Cassie Murray

Red Rain

Sirens wailed their usual song into the night. I looked up and, seeing no clouds yet, resumed my leisurely stroll through the reds and blues of the City’s streets. At one time, everyone would have been sprinting indoors around now. We quickly learned it was okay to take your time.

I rounded a corner to find one of the Reds closing the sewer grates. Something must have really gone wrong, I thought. I continued walking.

The Red gave me a glare and reached for something; I smiled at her and turned away. She was too busy to bother with me.

Feeling a drip fall on my shoulder and hearing a sizzle, I decided to walk a bit faster. I was five minutes from home and it was about that long until the rain properly started.

Cass Herrieven

Miserable Way of Thinking

Damn. Another earthquake attack. It’s becoming a tradition to have them on this side of the country tremble with destruction. When did this all start to begin with? More like, what’s causing these earthquakes nowadays? People always talk about their desire for our homes and lives to be in peace one day from all these traumatic events, but their prayerful thinking has never been enough to appreciate this world.

Back then you’d see things such as buses that’ll drive past these steep pathways that’ll take myself places I’d never dream placing my individual. When was the last time I have seen a vehicle after that same linking term, ‘destructive’. Where I decided myself there isn’t a place I’d take myself away that isn’t where I currently am.

Leah Sadler

Days pass and lives tick on Thoughts run round the heart of a broken one From lights gone cold and flames snuffed out Leaving is right, no shadow over my doubts

Tick tick tick

The clock runs on And that lake of love has rung like a gong For the passions wrung dry And the thoughts spiral by The eyes drift past What once was a love, Had been love.

Nova Heasman

Eternity is my being, my skeleton, my supposed home.

I’ll be inverted in my grave, like I am in the mirror.

My skull will stare back at my soul, blanky.

As if nothing’s there

Ruby Allman

 This poem was long-listed for the Tower Poetry Prize 2024

I know I should stop It's just,

I can't help it,

Standing there, with my magnifying eyes.

Scars from acne I shouldn't attack

Bumps from cuts I never could count

That dip, that curve, Too round, too flat, all wrong.

But more scars I'll make, I won't fall back

More shame I'll feel, add them up, count the days it's been Pick, prod, scrunch.

I'll never feel sound in my fleshy mound.

- Alabama Edwards

The Notebook

Tears clouding their vision, they took out the notepad he had given them. The thought of him had always inspired them to write, wax poetic, spill their heart onto the page in-front of them. But not this time. Their hand shook as they picked up their pen. They quivered as they flicked through their enraptured soul’s jottings to find the next empty page. Once they had found it, they wrote:

Honestly, fuck you. I love you. You know that. Now you’ve left me and have taken everything I was with you. You were stolen away and didn’t fight back. Do you even care? Do-

They collapsed into their notebook. Of course he cared. Of course he fought. It just wasn’t enough.

Cass Herrieven

Fall, in love

The leaves go brown

The sky is dim

They fall to the ground I fall for him

The sun sets

My hands are his glove Fall, falling in love

The breeze is calm

The cinnamon air

I take his arm

He feels my hair

The sun sets

Soft shine from above Fall, falling love

The drinks are warm

The clouds are dark

The harsh cold storm

The soft singing lark

The sun sets

Like the pairing dove Fall, falling in love

I loved him before I love him today

I’ll love him some more

No matter my way

The sun sets

Can’t say it enough Fall, fallen in love

Charlie Bowden-Smith

Fabian

When he strode in through the flapping doors of the pub, the jovial lunchtime atmosphere almost visibly shifted to ice - thin with tension. All conversations abruptly ended and the men lifting amber pints paused before the glasses reached their thirsting lips. The new man was dressed in a finely made but well-worn charcoal trench coat, which skimmed the shiny tops of his metropolitan issue brogues. He was not a particularly tall figure, however he emanated waves of cool assuredness that seemed to elevate him higher. Mysteriously, a black bowler hat was pulled down deep over his forehead so that the shadows it cast upon his face concealed his identity from those who might know him. However, when Detective Superintendent Robert Fabian entered the kings head, a notorious gangster hangout for all of London’s illicit , it was obvious to those crooks that this man was a copper. And not just any copper: Fabian of the Yard. Known to the criminal underground as a bloodhound in a bowler hat, the scent of justice always on his nose.

Molly Liddle

Niobe

A lifetime spends dedicating my life to her

Loving her with every nerve in my body

Cut swiftly with a single phrase

Blood seeps deep into the worn-out floor

My children’s body lay drying out in the sun

9 days my daughters bodies rest forever

Until my grief is solidified

Water weeps from my soul

For eternity Amelia Bloomfield

We Ran

This was our home, but we were clearly no longer welcome here. Our lives reduced to dust; I took her small, quivering hand in mine. Our memories and friends and happiness wiped from the surface of the world; we ran.

I couldn’t hold back tears as her innocent questions cut like knives through the crackle of flame: “What’s happening? Where are we?”

“I don’t know, my dear.”

“I’m scared,” she clung closer to me.

“Me too,” I gripped her hand tighter.

Another wave of heat. Another bang. Another tear of mine evaporated. Another dozen steps as we ran. How could they do this? Were we the only ones to escape?

Cass Herrieven

You Saved me! You Saved So I Can Kill You

You are such a pathetic, little moron, though I didn’t tell him that aloud to his face. Since in all reality, he’s not actually small, yet he’d be more aggravated if I called him a ‘moron’ than ‘little’, or ‘pathetic’. But why should that matter, I’m close, ‘I’m this close to overpowering the gods’. “I’m this damn close!” I shouted at him this time, signalling my index fingers together on how close I’m emphasising to killing him. He raised an eyebrow, while laying there considered the right time to place a fight for his life.

Leah Sadler

I caught a train that passed the town where you lived.

That’s right, passed.

I caught a train that passed the town where you lived and didn’t stop.

I kept going. Swapping familiarity for the unknown.

I didn’t get off, didn’t head down the steps, didn’t find you waiting in the ticket hall.

I thought of you just once on the journey, a fleeting reminder.

I did not think of you again. Instead I wrote as I always did, the things I wanted to tell you.

The tree in the garden has bloomed again.

I do not have much more to say. I don’t know when I will.

And I kept going, rumbling past your home and out into the countryside.

And if I thought I saw you standing on the other platform, I paid no attention to you.

I caught a train that passed where you used to live.

I know I won’t see you there anymore.

Izzi Creamer

Brighter Future

you look to me, my child you ask, ‘what's the world like?’

though I love the way you think I don’t know how I can tell you tell you about the pain around the world it hurts me

and it would kill me to see the same in you, to see how their pain hurts you. So that’s not what I say. instead

I bring to your ears, a message of Hope I show you the artistry of our Earth I tell you of Great Heroes that saved countless lives

and I see the sparkle in your eye your wide grin spread across your cheerful face. but what do you know? a eutopia? a world pure and true? no... I have failed you.

You’ve now grown, and I hate it, I hate it. Your eyes sparkle replaced with a dark despairful hue

Your grin dares not show its face cheerful eyes just a memory in my heart It’s anguish to see how You’ve been battered

Your mind flooded with sights of pain, of heartbreak, of death and Your so-called heroes not coming to save the day

the message of hope now buried in countless travesties, People in Power twiddle their thumbs as people in poverty die in the streets

I know you and I know your heart this heartache, to you is indescribable misery, every day I'm worried, anxious, scared

but then I see You. and yes, the beauty is purged from Your mind but I look to what is there instead. And I see a flame. a fire ignited through this hell.

you know more than I had ever wished for you but I am not scared. Not anymore. You won't leave, You won't run That's never been who you are

You’ll work to make this the world you knew, when you were just my child

Aivaras Vildziunas

Swan

Her head was at a slight tilt as if to bashfully expose the elegant curves of her slender neck. Smooth milky skin like the downy feathers of a swan. But behind that painter’s muse is not an abstract figure of virtue and perfection. There is a tension invisible to the painstaking brush strokes on the far-off canvas. Her neck twitches and strains at his request and rigamortis is a blessing. Swans glide and flex to the wind’s whims and bare their aching beauty freely from their feathered bosoms. To become a swan is to break your soul into two: delicacy like sugar strings that may snap with a warm breath.

Molly Liddle

The Weight of the World

By Leah Godwin

Let it all out

Every word, Every feeling of sadness, fear

Every thought that made you think you were worthless

Made you think you weren't beautiful or not enough

Let out every ugly word somebody has ever said to you Everything that has ever made you feel broken Please

Let it all out

Blood could be running down your hands, I would still hold you Let you bleed on me

Cover me in it, I do not care It could stain my clothes as you have stained my soul I care not as long as i get to hold you in my arms

The world will be cruel, yet i will be kind

Until the day i stop breathing, let me be the one to hold you close, Tell you how beautiful you are Let me bear the weight of the word, not you Give me your fears, your faith and your burdens Show me the scars you wish to hide Tell me everything that has made that heart bleed I will hold you tighter, I will always love you

You are safe

I see those eyes reflect to me

Like one of old

Like that of mystery

A familiar face

Like a song whispered by sea

A twinkling spark

That ecstasy

A heart and mind through that gaze I see

A hushed whisper back

I dare not speak

That face so like mine

Or so it seems

I cannot see my eyes

My reflection has abandoned me.

A life of blood

Is not what it seems

Is not what I foresaw

When I grew tall and lean

A sharpened smile

A hearth that screams

Echoes of frantic steps

A final screech

It’s not what I chose

When I was lost In dream

A final cry

A shattering screen

No more silver

Nor sunlight

Yet still

My portrait smiles cruelly back at me

Nova Heasman

Renew

As the sun settled on the horizon with streaks of crimson left in its wake, it seemed to be making itself comfortable for a new year as it laid down to rest just beyond the edge of the city. As the shadow of the Eifel tower lengthened, a buzz of excitement rippled from the newly formed crowds. They looked up expectantly at the sky ready to enter 2024 amidst the glow of flashing lights.

With a sense of hope that the slowly fading sun and I appeared to share, I looked around at the city that was so new to me and felt a feeling of warmth that had nothing to do with the crisp evening breeze.

I had spent so long living to make others happy, satisfied and content that I had forgotten to live for myself; I had lost the building blocks of who I was and what I chose to live for. This city was my new start and where I wanted to belong.

As I gazed upon the tower, that is the most familiar attraction of France, I wondered whether I could watch the city enter this near year as if I were a bird from above.

As I ascended the steps of the tower I felt as if I were already flying; I felt freer than I had ever done before. When I reached the top, I let my eyes wonder to the thousands of lights below and it was like looking down at the sun sparkling off the dark blue sea, as they shone up at me, a mosaic of colourful lights.

At least hundreds now had gathered down below, each with their own stories to tell and their own sense of purpose as they perhaps made predictions on what this new year would bring and whether they were destined to live a life of happy contentment or uncharted chaos: thrilling adventure or constant nervousness.

Only time can tell.

I was suddenly shaken out of my reverie with the first flashing firework which was launched into the sky. I watched its unpredictable progress, still with that rare sense of wander that possessed me. It was like I was carrying around a flame that flared up inside me which provided me with warmth and hope.; something with which I was not familiar.

Without really knowing what I was doing, I started to descend the steps of the tower. The moment of fire and flashing lights, which provided a sense awe for the whole city, had faded and fallen like the fireworks.

When I had reached the last step, I let my eyes fall on a small girl, who was singing in fluent French while waiting for her mother to tie her shoelace. As I watched their steady progress through the murmuring crowds, I still tried to hear

the young girl’s sweet voice, which made me reminisce about the days when I was innocent and had little responsibility. I don’t wish to go back to my younger years however, as I have power now, power to make changes for the better and although I was going to start living for myself that doesn’t mean there will be a new me. It just means that I am going to let the old me shine through like the way the sun pierces the glass of a green house.

Felicity Collet

4 Things I’ll Need if There’s a Fire

60 seconds, emerge!

What will I need?

Something to feed on the journey, but I have money for that. Clothes that I’ll clearly need to change and keep warm if I’m gonna end up on the streets.

Maybe take any electronic device to retrieve my entertainment, But most of all, I must take my meds all the way if I’m needed to stay alive for longer.

‘Out I go’, I say, by my thundering thoughts after jumping from a firing building with all the stuff I’ve received.

Leah Sadler

I always hoped for the rain when it poured

Fires crack and soot spurs on

But the wisp of mist brings clarity like never seen before

Blood will drop and blood will fall

Blood repaid while blood is boiled

Faces droop and anger sours

Vengeance is lost and misery is paid

When our debts are settled with war

Hopeful green and envious viridian

Joyous laughs and sick bedridden

Endless water flowing from you and above

While graceful feathers bring you my love

Golden suns will rise again

You'll find comfort and make amends

For even with a loss undeserved

Time goes on for a weeping world

Nova Heasman

Friends in every universe

Do you think we are friends in every universe?

The word fills my skull as I imagine the ways we would find each other

Maybe,

We are characters in someone's favourite book, making them laugh beautifully

Until tears stream down their face with joy

Or the comedic group in a tv show

Maybe,

We knew one another when we were young

Childhood memories collectively shared, lives stretched across minds

Maybe,

We were co-workers destined to find one another

Filling the job with joy

In every time, every day

Till the world gives out on us, we will find each other in every way possible

And even then, we will remain the stars in the sky

Amelia Bloomfield

*Extract from a Vampire’s Journal*

My inspiration having run drier than the veins of my cattle, I discarded my pen and closed my notepad. I had been a vampire for more than two centuries, yet I couldn’t come up with a single useful lesson to write in my guidebook. Well, the one about making sure the victim’s blood runs directly to their carotid artery wasn’t too bad. I don’t know how many young vampires would have the patience to hang their food upside down for five minutes. After all, in my first decade I was so eager that I accidentally made a Frenchman draw the ire of all of Europe with who I chose to feed on.

Ah! There’s something to add: beware the geopolitical consequences of feeding in public.

Cass Herrieven

Felicity Collett

The End

The end. That’s one way to walk out of work. How long has that been there? I know I haven’t been knowledgeable with my surroundings, but that hasn’t been the perfect timing to recognise that title. I walk away with music playing the syllables through my ears from the cheap earphones and continue where I was heading. Home.

I jogged across the road to the other pathway with an upbeat tune skipping over my head, almost like a musical would jump out of nowhere with this unknown crowd that’s nowhere in sight. I walked down the corner from a 5-6 floor building where I’ll see the modern yellow, demolished car with a tree growing inside from this morning, I haven’t went down this route home yet, so it caught me by surprise to find a somewhat well-maintained vehicle collided with a tree as if it magically appeared earlier that morning.

Then I walked down a long park side with a line of cherry blossom trees beside both sides of the pathway with passionate words memorised from my ears to my vision. The expression of love resembles the colour of the atmosphere, then stands before me are chains of different race of flowers dangling on taller and thicker trees ahead of me, the unique kind of colours open up such a strangely positive reflection upon myself. Do these flowers have something to do with a previous or upcoming event? I should look it up at some point

Leah Sadler

Shadows

I sit stiff on the edge of the crimson metal and steel seats, and I listen to all the echoes of the hospital: the sound of shoe soles scuffing the smooth speckled floor; anxious family members muttering in hushed tones to one another, their features are ink blotted scarlet from soft weeping; the droning and whirring buzz of the vending machines; the wretched splutters and hacks from hunched shadows, wearily slumped over on their chairs, reverberate redundantly off the walls. Never had I seen such a place so drained of joy and life, it seemed to ooze suffering and misery like some rancid wound.

Molly Liddle

Mother

Oh, dear Mother of the Moon, let that light extinguish itself. Stomped on, small black foam out the bedroom window now, vents webbed, small tissue encased in wet tar, phlegm, dust. A mixture.

I still remember that hollow bone, and the marrow spewed on the carpet. Sticking to the wood. I remember where it happened, as I remember where I sleep. That silver breath mint turns you metallic now, Mother. That penny roll off the counter as it trembled. It’s over.

Dear Moon carver I remember the bedtime alibis, the rehearsals.

This is what you'll tell the nice man in blue. The gentleman, an act of sure service. I remember the sweet caress on my matte cheek, let's go over it in the morning.

This grape juice cannot soothe my soft stiffness, mother. Those candy sticks, sugar and playing in the leaves. Rolling the leaves now, mother, kissing my fingertips. it'll be okay. it'll be okay. one day, it'll all be okay. i'll be okay, Mother.

Rean Klansek

My Life Became Worthless After Looking at That Wanted Poster

Who’s this one out of all the wanted-posters on its wall today? Scar Goodtimes, 3,500,000 PLN, can’t see the bottom description due to crap graphics, wanted dead or alive. Whatever this rascal’s done for, it’s some name to be known to be wanted for. ‘Scar Goodtimes’. Were his scars caused by a ‘goodtime’. Ha, ha. Not funny. Crappy jokes, always been a bad habit of mine. I pinned the poster back on the wanted-board along with its remaining collection and picked up another poster with the name, ‘Riddl Methis’. I sat back down on my side of the carriage with my partner. I heard a snap on the wooden seat as I slammed down onto my side. How wonderful. “We really need a new ride.” I groaned once again.

After a day and a half of travelling a broken carriage with myself whining about multiple reasons to get a portable ride that won’t shatter into a million pieces one day, might I brag, to my partner. We reached our destination. What my ol’ buddy always say, never regret your choices you’ve assigned yourself to commit, and right now, I regret my bloody choice here! Where I always complain about every plan I’ve committed to without fail, where this time, I have a valid reason to complain! My best pal is dead, my partner, my ol’ buddy, my best friend. Sacrifice himself just to finish that pitiful motherfucker so I can get the reward to live a better life. Better life, my ass. Why should I retrieve that dirtier money when the blood is covered by the double amount of death that’s needed to be lost.

Leah Sadler

I want to scrub my face with disinfectant because it’s never clean enough

I want to scrub till blood the dross that fills my brain tainted with bad stuff

I want to scrub away the invisible grime that clings to my evertainted soul

I want to scrub away the filth of this world to finally feel again whole

Nova Heasman

Fingers scrape against bare skin

Scratch and scrape to get within Time choking and cutting off my supply

Youth and happiness a far gone cry

Flitter by these days of mine

They'll never return, no reason why And evermore I'm unable still

To break through these thoughts of my own free will

Nova Heasman

Eclipse

Let me hold you. Only just to be on your arms, would save me. Vast are the planes of the fabrics of my heart, that I would wrap you up in and keep you warm. Even after a lifetime of us, our love will blaze on: immortal. Language is limiting, for words pallor against your beauty and my passion. Oh, how your glances and gazes sustain me. Virtuous Deity. Eclipse my being with your light.

Molly Liddle

Trapped

Please let me go home

Let me feel the warmth over my marble body

Let me feel my sisters' smiles

Room 19, not the Patheon

Pieces of my history stretched across the room

Display their thievery, their lies

You are holding me captive, let me go home

Amelia Bloomfield

And the next season welcomes me, like the brush of lips against my skin. It’s bittersweet, watching the sun rise through an old window and melt the white frost clung to the grass when there’s skeletons strewn out behind me, hollow-eyed and silent beyond what I can bear

I can’t let them rest or shove them in a wardrobe, under a pile of old, untouched clothes.

I’m made up of my past, Their fingers sewed my limbs together and struck lightning straight into my heart. So, I keep them behind me, I can afford to turn around every once in a while, maybe take a step or two back.

Ruby Allman