These Pages Sing: Spring 2025

THESE PAGES SING WELSH LITERARY MAGAZINE Carolyn Thomas. CJ Wagstaff. Ellen Davies. Luke Blake. Manda Eliot. Matthew M C Smith.

Michael Kelleher. Nick Pallot. Paula Montez. Sarah Rowland Jones.

Beth Webster. Dee Montague. Diana Powell.

SPRING 2025 | ISSUE 03

THESEPAGESSING.CO.UK

Table of Contents.

POETRY

Carolyn Thomas Toasting Muriel with Ice Cream Dydd Sul y Blodau CJ Wagstaff Ode to My Dying Prayer Plant Heron Song Next Door’s Dog Barking Ellen Davies It will help Luke Blake The Queer Ghost

Manda Eliot Stolen Matthew M C Smith A Canvas of Dimming Light Crazy Horse (The Best Rugby Season) Michael Kelleher Allotments I only wanted a book Nick Pallot SCENT AND THINKING Paula Montez 'Taith y Gwynt' Field of sorrows Sarah Rowland Jones Harvest

SHORT FICTION

Beth Webster The First Wave Dee Montague Ableist in Aisle 3 Diana Powell The Keeper of Hand-Me-Down Tales Luke Blake The Cemetery Walk

Perry Wyatt Chief Editor Cori SmithPimlott Short Fiction Editor Tom Pimlott Cover Designer

TOASTING MURIEL WITH ICE CREAM CAROLYN THOMAS

Demands beyond grief: paperwork, practical arrangements, family to see.

Essential, sombre, social. Enervating.

Consolations fall soft like confetti, professional, well meaning, generous, and everyone has stories, warm, humorous…

Escaping for a few hours, we walked by the sea ruffled by a light breeze, enough to stir the rhythmic clink of halyard against mast on yachts berthed at Knab Rock.

Among familiar sights: curving down into the bay, the Neath and Afan valleys; nearby, Mumbles pier and lighthouse…

Among holiday makers, locals enjoying late Easter sun; among snippets of conversations, a snatch of Cymraeg, insistent mews of circling herring gulls; among waves’ slap on hulls at this high tide we sat quietly at Verdi’s, guiltless truants from responsibilities: the consolation of an unexpected peace.

‘She would have loved this,’ you said.

As if you read my thoughts, you disappeared; came back with strawberry sundaes, lavish, sweet, glasses loaded with her favourite treat oozing with fruit. As if choreographed, we raised them, silent in a precious moment: toasting Muriel with ice cream.

3

DYDD SUL Y BLODAU CAROLYN THOMAS I see you now, a tsunami of yellows, festooned in forsythia, bedecked in broom, your basket fat with daffs: all ready to stream into the sea of gold engulfing angels, wooden crosses, Victorian funeral urns, epitaphs in English and Cymraeg.

Among the women, faithful to the dead, you lay gifts for family, but also bring eccentric kindness to the ritual: a profusion of spare blooms for the unvisited, lest they remain forgotten.

Citrus, ochre, saffron, gold caress untended plots, a glowing flood.

Each headstone has its story; each woman, her history, yet all share a secret communion flowing through veins like blood or ichor.

Some say a silent prayer; others arrange their flowers, move away.

You smile, nod, satisfied; wipe soil from your hands, call us from chasing lizards on the churchyard wall.

Carolyn Thomas is from Tonna, a village in the Neath Valley in South Wales, but has lived on Tyneside since her days as a student at Newcastle University and is now retired after a career of teaching in Further, Higher and Adult Education.

She has reviewed for Stand and published poetry in Anthropocene, Dreich, The Ekphrastic Review, Impossible Archetype, These Pages Sing and elsewhere as well as stories in two anthologies published by Honno Press, Lipstick Eyebrows and Painting the Beauty Queens Orange, which contains her account of life as a gay woman in the 1970s. She lives with a misanthropic cat, still thinks of Wales as home and, stereotypically, sports a dragon tattoo.

4

ODE TO MY DYING PRAYER PLANT CJ WAGSTAFF

Each night you come alive in shaking praise, rake heaven for a pale ration of moon. I’ve learned that a north-facing window is what does it for you: a view of the garage, its asbestos roof, a tomcat at large in the flat dark of the garden.

But you can’t stand to look at our happy streak of bay curling into steeltowns miles to the southeast, and every sunrise makes you feel like you are going to be sick.

I respect it: this drama, your High Camp sulk.

Each morning all your faces turned away, nonbelievers.

CJ Wagstaff is a poet, musician and non-fiction writer from Neath in South Wales. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, Swim Press, Buzz Magazine and others. In his practice, CJ is interested in exploring interpersonal relationships to place. He is currently studying for a PhD in creative writing.

5

HERON SONG CJ WAGSTAFF She spends the morning in a balancing asana - sunning, unbunching in the dew, one grey and knotted leg twisting up into the white of her belly.

It’s just me and her, my grandfather’s pond feeding her untidily back to herself, neck retracted to a question mark, watching.

I know what she wants – the grail, the golden koi – its dense and fleshy bulk, its unkillable weight. Her wet lust bulges over itself under the surface, its inkblot stigma like a twenty-year-old Rorschach test.

She’s been at it for days, narrow digits splayed in the fern moss; flank feathers rolled to a sheath of wet points.

I’ve seen her, bill pink as coral, hammer the water’s mirrored plane, aerate the shallow pool and come up clean.

6

Next Door’s Dog Barking CJ WAGSTAFF

That night, the freight train cut our town in half: a great, green anaconda.

It ate a car; a shed; the dog park; the nursing home, groaned with fullness as it dragged its load through the length of us.

The window glass shook itself apart - dusted the chair, the rug, stained my fingers like turmeric – as all of winter sat cross-legged in our living room, dissolved itself in electric light.

A canyon opened right down the market’s middle aisle, shelves pouring shampoo and painkillers into the rift, ruin sticking to the soles of our slippers.

That night, I listened alone to the quivering bridge, the house empty but for the cold and next door’s dog barking, breaking down the walls.

7

It will help ELLEN DAVIES

to watch the cherry trees, to see how they bloom, blush before dropping their petals.

Standing in the queue for the supermarket, a car speeds past, sends the pavement petals swirling.

It will help to learn the names of the other trees that offer up hope crab apple, juneberry, to notice how they come to life in spite of our stillness.

It will help to remember that it is April, the month of openings.

Ellen Davies is a writer from the Rhondda, south Wales. She has a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University. Ellen’s work has appeared in a variety of magazine and journals including Mslexia, Envoi, Popshot Magazine, The Lonely Crowd and Cheval 10, amongst others. Ellen’s poetry pamphlet, Accent, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2015. Ellen's short stories have appeared in The Ghastling, Cast a Long Shadow (Honno, 2022) and Lipstick Eyebrows (Honno, 2023). When she's not writing, Ellen can be found in a museum, or walking her rescue dog around the local cemetery.

8

THE QUEER GHOST LUKE BLAKE When you tell of my history, Why must you omit that part of me?

In forgotten tomes, my name resides with truths untold, that society hides.

Scholar’s pen strikes out– deny.

My love deemed naught, Because you lie.

My life painted in muted hues, The facts of me, you manipulate and abuse.

Love letters sealed, words suppressed, The fire of my passion, never expressed.

You call it friendship, chaste and pure, Ignoring glances stolen, love that is demure.

Secret smiles, our code, Erased, unseen, yet to be explored.

You fear the stain, the scandalous blight, Afraid of history– to set things right.

But “correctness” built by lies they weave, My truth– my life, they bury, deep they leave.

I rise from silence, whisper faint, A ghost of truth, a poignant paint.

For history’s pen may deceit and lie But the love we had will never die.

We walk unseen, unheard, untold, But love’s own truth cannot be controlled.

In every silence, every tear, Our hidden stories persevere.

So go ahead – write and erase Our love will find its rightful place.

In whispers passed, in songs unsung, Someday our truth will rise, on freedom’s tongue.

Luke Blake (He/They) is a queer and disabled writer who was born and raised in Swansea.

Growing up surrounded by the works of Dylan Thomas influenced them to read and write more actively. They spent most of their childhood either in the library or the cinema. Luke recently graduated from Swansea University with 1st class honours in English Literature and Creative Writing. They are currently undertaking an MA in Creative Writing. They have previously had poetry published in ABABCB Magazine. An excerpt from their stage play was also performed by Fluellen Theatre Company.

9

Stolen MANDA ELIOT

Tywi stirs on the slopes of Crug Gynan, courses the Cambrian, cracked by the Llyn Brianne, where Twm Sion Cati climbed to his cave. Cormorants prey, blue-green allis shad and sewin swim through the steep hills of the forest separating Ceredigion and Powys. Moss, windflower, sycamore, beech watch as the river sweeps down to the Dyffryn, where silver-washed fritillaries flutter by the holly, hazel, elder, and bluebells flow over Llandyfeisant graves. Ash branches dip in shimmering reflections - sedges, rushes, shingle grasses, plovers and swifts, the curved neck of swans. Tumbling houses, pastel shaded, are stacked like colourful coral caught in a net.

Tributaries merge in the estuary where otters splash beneath the ruins of a fortress, and sails slump like stilled tongues.

Manda Eliot is a Carmarthenshire poet who enjoys spoken word events and walking on beaches with her Yorkshire Terrier. She has been published by Poetry Wales, Dreich, ASP Literary Journal and Panoply.

10

A Canvas of Dimming Light MATTHEW M C SMITH

After ‘Shepherd & Sheep Dogs’ by Sir Kyffin Williams R.A. I saw him out there in the frame, once, for real, the old shepherd, let’s call him Ianto, not yet dying in Time, insisting by his wild gesticulations that he should claim some colour.

I saw him there, I forget which of Yr Wyddfa’s peaks, when the knifed, slapped-on oils of the master became real presence. I saw the crabbed and babbling mountain man, the creeping, misshapen parcel of his aspect, shambling across the sketch of a range, herding his crook-hounds, staggering as though his wind-buffeted cloak was kite-ready to take off, right there, at any moment, to snap off that peak and twist out, downwards, tumbling like an appalling Icarus.

I saw his mazing dogs at sport, swarming crags, baying at their master, exacting their own agency through the hurricane spouts of their maddened, guttural throats. The shepherd took the barely-etched paths, trying to escape his master’s brush, unsteady within a canvas of dimming light.

Servile to fate, he got shades, dull pigments under the master’s watchful eye and brighter finger-smears at his master’s pockets that only I could see; he stopped still, as if in resignation, fixed right there, clinging impossibly to that dark swirl of rock.

11

Crazy Horse (The Best Rugby Season) MATTHEW M C SMITH Fleet-footed, he fired up time, flaming through the gasp, full-tilt into the sambuca-heat, jaw like an angle grinder.

Saddle-thighed, calfs packed with fists, arms like rocks in the afon, he bore into the dread-thump of pre-season, blood-thump-bolting through men like wheeling, wasting whippets, straying in the yellow pound of the pitch.

Crazy Horse, as they called him on the beer-swilled Terraces, always at the shoulder of each player, head-first, nose stuffed up from the drip, one cheekbone blue, one eye socket black, rip-ready, rodeo relentless, fist fast into Bluto and Popeye gibs.

Bucking hell! Ballsy Bronco!

MATTHEW M C SMITH IS A WELSH POET FROM THE EAST OF SWANSEA. HIS WORK CAN BE READ IN POETRY WALES, ARACHNE PRESS, THE GOWER SOCIETY, THE LONELY CROWD AND INK, SWEAT AND TEARS. HE HAS READ WITH OWEN SHEERS AND MATTHEW HOLLIS RECENTLY. MATTHEW IS CAMPAIGNING FOR THE REPATRIATION OF THE RED LADY OF PAVILAND BACK TO WALES.

12

Allotments

MICHAEL KELLEHER Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap Galatians 6: 7 Scarecrows wrapped in scarves and winter clothing wear brown gloves that once warmed green fingers, wheelless barrows house upturned pots, but when leaves bud, plots need turning, the crisp sounds of spades slice Spring soil, rock-hard turf consigned to memory.

Bunches of ardent gardeners get to tend beloved parcels of weed-spoilt ground, check forecasts for frost or rain that may ruin rectangled lots carved into the mountain.

Bamboo sticks, teepees without clothes, a promise of beans running through Summer.

Mounds of Maris Pipers spell deep-fried chips.

Wild garlic bodes well for Tapas Tuesdays.

The stuff of homemade soups sit in rows.

Sunlight bathes Pontypool’s rippled landscape, sprays rays of golden blooms on rosy cheeks of heroes in multicoloured wellies, their spirits transcending efforts, souls grounded, rooted in earth, digging deep into an ancient proverb.

Michael Kelleher is a poet from Torfaen, South Wales. He attended a creative writing course on his 70th birthday and wrote his first poem a few weeks later. He is a member of Newport Stanza affiliated to the Poetry Society and Disability Arts Cymru. His poems have been included in anthologies published by Dark Thirty Poetry; Newport Stanza and Poets at Barnabas and has read at the Abergavenny Writing Festival and the first Newport Festival of Words.

13

I ONLY WANTED A BOOK MICHAEL KELLEHER

In 1999 the International Federation for the Deaf formally adopted blue as its colour to symbolise deafness.

I stand in the queue, immersed in the first chapter.

A 10-year-old Barcelona boy visits the cemetery of books, plucks one from a shelf who’s title mirrors the one I’m holding just plucked from a shelf.

I look up, find myself at the counter surprised by the volume of noise.

On the other side, a man mouths lines from Bowie’s Sound & Vision, looks at me as if I wasn’t worth the time of day.

Loud speakers vibrate; the melody bounces; bookshelves double as treble clefs.

I’m lost. Caught between classic rock and the need to answer the man who seems in a hurry, in a race, has no time to help me hear what he says, give me a chance to guess those parts unheard.

Once scanned it’s in his hand.

I can no longer see the price to pay, watch his face contort, an angry finger point.

I’ve wasted precious seconds of his day, The machine displays, with inanimate courtesy, the sum I need to share.

I thank the card reader for its kindness.

Go back home but cannot see my book.

The curtains are drawn, I’ve wrapped myself in blue.

Dark blue.

14

SCENT AND THINKING NICK PALLOT (“Today I think only with scents”: Edward Thomas, Digging.)

Summer heat’s an aperient, opening pores and windows, distilling the smells it draws out, a parfumier blending conifer with wild honeysuckle, a summer brocade of citrus and antiseptica thumbprint on the brain of place and weather.

Compile your own olfactory almanac, but never believe everything you smell!

Smells dissimulate, hint at likenesses, counterfeits that confuse their intrinsic nature: frost’s metallic tang of flint-struck sparks, a chestnut’s heatwave exhalation of linen humid with semen, the bloom of ozone and wet slate a shower releases from baked earth.

And creatures, because they think, can be deluded: blowflies, thoughts limited to corruption, to stinkhorns’ feigned putrescence, unwittingly spread their spores; hawthorn blossom lures tiny pollinators into a haze of carrion and acid drops.

Legion are the lies aromas tell the living.

And smells are the propaganda too of ghosts.

An odour, long after death, can cling to a name, the essential oil of memory, an aromatic determinism by which a scent embodies a whole character.

15

Time’s sublimated my mother to the fume of rubber, its molecules of love vaporised by the scalding water in the bottle, a plump crimson capsule, a sedative placenta, she slipped under the sheets I curled foetally between, light- headed with flu, reconnected with her now only when unwell.

A grand-mother marinated my childhood in lavender, not only her clothes, her life sanitised by its camphor and spice, a bystander in the lives of the men she idolised, husband, son, grandson, as fragile as the lavender-scented tissue we found her blouses and cardigans neatly layered in after she died, so tiny, as age shrank her, she seemed concentrated to the essence of unthinking adoration, to the perfume that’s become her signature.

Neither perfume’s the truth of either woman, yet, as I age, I want it to be, want to inhale it in the scent of warm rubber, of tissue infused with lavender, twin auras so volatile I know that, when I’m gone, they’ll fade irretrievably. Creatures, because they think, can be deluded, but to choose to be deluded is what makes us human, as does my hope some trace of unconditional love, a residual fragrance, a nuance in the evening air, elusive, imagined even, might linger on, unfamiliar in another world perhaps, yet still recognised as the good beyond untruth.

Nick Pallot has recently moved to Swansea from Kent to be near his family, who work here. His mother came from Mountain Ash, so he feels the move is a reconnection in more than one way.

16

'Taith y Gwynt' 'Translation: Journey of the Wind'

Paula Montez O nunlle daeth y gwynt, A finnau ar ei hynt.

Ysbryd y dderwen wyf i, Ymhell o’r oesoedd a fu.

Cysgais yn drwm yn y glo, Llosgais pan rwygodd y fro.

Nawr yn wan a cholledig I’r byd yn anweledig, Un llais â neges drist, A byddar yw pob clust I nunlle aeth y gwynt, A finnau ar ei hynt The wind came from nowhere, And me on its journey.

I am the spirit of the oak, A long way from the ages of the past.

I slept heavily in the coal, I burned when the vale was torn.

Now weak and lost, Invisible to the world, One voice with a sad message, And deaf is every ear.

The wind went to nowhere And me on its journey 17

Field of sorrows Paula Montez

They call it the field of sorrows, It seems an incongruous name, Daisies like stars in the furrows Burst open straight after the rain.

The sedge lines the edges like spears And swifts screech their joy overhead, The poppies in lines then appear All marching along in their red.

The harvest mice rifle through seeds That drop for their ultimate task, Some captured and snared by the weeds, Or lost to the winds of the past.

But echoes remain in the stones, For sorrows are buried beneath, In fragments of bullets and bones The soil has been nourished by grief.

Paula Montez was born and raised in North Wales, then migrated South to Swansea where she enjoys being part of the poetry scene, and is a member of Swansea & District Writers’ Circle. Her poetry often incorporates rhythm and rhyme, reflecting her belief that there is still an appetite for traditional, accessible poetry. Samples of her poetry are available on Instagram at @paula_montez_poetry. Her books are also available on Amazon, and her poems are included in various anthologies.

18

Harvest SARAH ROWLAND JONES

For B L As dinner ended, he took the small fruit and held it between finger and thumb.

‘My father’ he said ‘was like this pear, hanging in a tree. God watched him ripen and seeing the fullness of maturity, breathed on him and released him.

In his quiet falling, we came to see the sweetest consummation of all he was as husband, father.

It was the tenderness of grace.’

Sarah Rowland Jones has been published in Poetry Wales, in anthologies and online by Seren and Eyewear, as well as by Ink, Sweat & Tears and Snakeskin, and in South Africa where she lived for a while. Now back home in Wales, she is Dean of Saint Davids.

19

The First Wave Beth Webster

Through the windows of the intensive care unit, Mared notices dawn is finally breaking. The rose-gold glow in the sky, visible between the staff accommodation block and the multi-storey, signals the approaching end of her shift.

The shrill alarm of the heart monitor summons her away from the window, and back to her patient. In the bed in the centre of the room, Mr. Naranjan lies motionless, his eyes closed, mouth open. His breathing is uneven and shallow. Mared reaches under the collar of his gown and removes the leads which connect him to the heart monitor. Silence returns to the room.

At the beginning of Mared’s shift, Mr. Naranjan had been attached to a ventilator to control his breathing, adrenaline pumps to keep his heart going, and a dialysis machine to help his kidneys. Now, untethered from them all, they stand silently around him like mourners at a graveside.

The intensive care team may not have been able to save him, but at least Mared found him a side room off the main unit. Through the window in the door, she can see the chaos in the unit outside: rows of patients still tethered to their machines, nurses bustling about beside them. She must check on other patients soon. But before that, Mr. Naranjan’s wife waits for her video call to say goodbye. As Mared arranges Mr. Naranjan’s arms neatly on top of the sheets, she notes that his fingertips are already tinged blue.

Only a few weeks before, one of those fingers had been pointed in her face. Mr. Naranjan had bawled at her for incorrectly documenting his patient’s chest drain output: ‘Eight hours in theatre could all be undone by your incompetence!’

Mared turns her head to check the clock, and pain shoots up her neck. She’s been sleeping on the sofa for the last couple of weeks and her body is protesting. Perhaps her husband will already be up when she gets home, and she can sleep in their bed.

Not that Elwyn knows why she isn’t sleeping with him; let him keep thinking she falls asleep over her breakfast.

20

‘I can’t hear you, nurse!’

Only the top half of Mrs. Naranjan’s face is visible on the iPad screen. Her forehead is creased, her brown eyes narrowed in a puzzled squint.

Mared gives up trying to speak with her and turns the iPad around so that Mrs. Naranjan can see her husband. There’s a long pause; Mared nearly turns the iPad round again to check she’s still there, but then hears her say; ‘It’s so nice to see your face, Thiru, without all those tubes in the way.’

It's too late for Mared to notice a brown stain on the sheets near his head. They have run out of clean linen, and no one knows when more will be available. She could have moved his pillow to hide it. Mrs. Naranjan starts to say goodbye.

‘Thiru, I’m so sorry I can’t be there with you, but I know you would be angry if I put myself at risk.’

Mared had been worried about listening in on so private a moment, but it proves not to be an issue. Being forced to stand still makes her hyper-aware of the mask digging into the bridge of her nose, the added weight of the visor making her teeth ache. Her chin begins to itch; perhaps a loose fibre from the mask, but she won’t be able to scratch it until the end of the shift. Under her apron and gown, her scrubs are soaked with sweat, chafing under her arms and between her legs. She barely notices the PPE when she’s running around the unit, but without any distractions, it suffocates her.

She tries to think of something else: the antibiotics for bed four she still needs to mix, the adrenaline infusion for bed two she needs to refill. She thinks of going home, having a hot shower, and climbing into bed with Elwyn... But no, she can’t do that.

How can she forget, especially with Mrs. Naranjan saying goodbye to her husband right in front Mared suddenly realises Mrs. Naranjan is addressing her, ‘He was living in the staff flats to protect me. I’m vulnerable, you see. Diabetes. He didn’t even tell me when he tested positive; he didn’t want to worry me.’ Her voice begins to crack. ‘I didn’t realise when he left that...’

21

Mared can only stand and hold the iPad. She can’t hug Mrs. Naranjan or squeeze her hand. She can’t say anything or offer any words of comfort because Mrs. Naranjan can’t hear her. She can’t make her a cup of tea. She can’t give Mrs. Naranjan some Vaseline to put on her husband's cracked lips or some moisturiser to rub into his hands. All she can do is stand there.

Mrs. Naranjan dabs at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I’ve finished, thank you, nurse. Please let me know when... when he passes.’

Mared raises her thumb in front of the camera, but Mrs. Naranjan has already hung up.

The door opens , and a small PPE-clad figure sticks their head in.

‘How’s he doing? Wife say goodbye?’

Mared recognises the voice of Gabriel, the charge nurse. Without waiting for an answer, he continues.

‘A&E rang; they’ve got five needing a bed. One of them is Marie. You remember, left a few months ago to work on the respiratory ward? She only tested positive Tuesday, but her oxygen’s down to seventy-six. No medical history.’

Outside on the main unit, one of the monitors begins alarming loudly.

‘I’ll get that. As soon as Mr. N.’s passed, give the bed a clean and we’ll get the next one in.’

He disappears. As Mared turns her head back to Mr. Naranjan, the room disappears in fog. It clears once she faces forward; the seal of her mask must be failing. She should leave the unit and replace it immediately, but they’re running out of this type of mask. She was lucky to find this one. She’ll have to try not to move her head too much till the end of the shift.

Trying not to think about the risk of an improperly sealed mask, she turns her thoughts instead to the nurse about to be admitted.

22

Mared remembers posting a ‘Happy Birthday’ message on her Facebook page not long ago. She’d just turned thirty-five, the same age as Elwyn.

It’s over an hour after her shift was supposed to finish, but Mared’s finally queuing at the unit doors to start the decontamination process. Gabriel appears next to her.

‘Sad about Mr. N. You alright?’

Mared is temporarily saved from answering as they step through the unit doors and begin removing their gloves and gowns, sanitising their hands as each layer is removed. As fresh air hits Mared’s sweat-soaked scrubs, Gabriel asks again, ‘Are you OK?’ Mared wants to say that no, she isn’t OK. She feels sick and guilty because she had to wrap Mr. Naranjan’s body in the dirty sheet he’d died in; they ran out of body bags weeks ago, and there are still no clean sheets. But she knows Gabriel will say she couldn’t have done anything differently. She wants to say she’s worried her capacity to feel basic compassion and humanity is rapidly being squeezed out of her. She wants to ask Gabriel if he thinks they’ll ever return. But she can’t imagine what anyone could reply to that, so all she says to Gabriel is, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

They bin their visors and peel off their masks. Mared massages her face, the deep grooves on her cheeks. She gingerly feels the bridge of her nose; it’s painful, but mercifully, the skin is still unbroken. Her hair is sticking out at all angles. By contrast, Gabriel’s hair is still perfectly gelled in place, his uniform appearing sweat-free and barely creased.

‘Mr. N. was an arsehole at times, let’s be honest. I remember him having a go at you about that chest drain not long ago. But he was a good guy, underneath it all. When he was off sick and still at home, he insisted we call him about any problems with his patients here.’

They paddle through a large tray filled with disinfectant, decontaminating the bottom of their shoes.

‘His wife’s lovely. He used to bring in food she’d made all the time. Remember that coconut cake, bibikkan was it called? So good.’

23

Mared follows Gabriel to the sink, where they wash their hands and arms up to the elbow. The weight of their PPE might be gone, but the weight of Mared’s exhaustion remains. They still need to change out of their scrubs.

So many nurses have been redeployed from other wards to help in intensive care that a large equipment cupboard doubles as a changing room. Two other nurses are already getting changed inside. Exhaustion overriding embarrassment, Mared shucks off her sweat-soaked scrubs, dumps them in a red laundry basket, and pulls on her civvies. Before she can leave, Gabriel puts his hand on her arm. She jumps at his touch, feeling anxious even though she’s just been through the decontamination process with him.

‘Are you sure you’re OK? You’ve been really quiet the last few shifts.’

‘Just knackered.’

Gabriel gives her shoulder a squeeze.

‘We always used to go for drinks after a run of shit nights. Why don’t we do it over Zoom? Invite Eleri and Rosa?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Just the other day, my husband said how much he misses you. To be honest, I think he misses that gorgeous husband of yours.’

He winks at me, and I feel the corners of my mouth pull up, almost against my will.

‘Alright then. Wednesday?’

‘It’s a date. For our husbands.’

He lifts his arms as if to hug me , but then seems to remember the distancing rules and lowers his arms again.

‘Text me later, anyway.’

On the short walk from the hospital to her flat, Mared’s relief at shedding that heavy carapace of PPE is now replaced by a feeling of exposure.

24

The streets are eerily still and silent. It should be rush hour, but there are no cars on the roads, no people on the pavements. The cafes are closed; the familiar smells of the custard tarts and coffee from the Portuguese cafe, and fry-ups from the greasy spoon opposite, are absent. Even the cats Mared usually pets – the tabby near the Post Office and the three-legged tuxedo on the street parallel to her own – are nowhere to be seen.

Once inside her flat, she carefully removes her bag and shoes in the entryway and puts them in a carrier bag to keep them separate from the others. She can hear Elwyn snoring in the bedroom, even through the closed door. After immolating herself under a scalding shower and disinfecting all the surfaces she touched on the way in, Mared opens the bedroom door a crack and peers in.

A sliver of light is coming through a gap in the curtains. Elwyn’s lying on his back, his eyes closed and mouth slightly open. His dark beard is longer than usual, with no need to keep it neat while he’s furloughed. One hand rests in his hair; hair that she tried to cut the other day and had to stop halfway through because they were laughing so much at how uneven it was, there’d been a serious danger she’d cut his ear off.

Mared thinks back to all the things she did on leaving the intensive care unit, how carefully she went through each step of the decontamination process. Can she trust herself enough to have kept Elwyn safe?

He shifts in the bed, the covers pulling down to expose his chest. The scar bisecting it is faded but still visible. Mared remembers Mr. Naranjan telling her and Elwyn’s parents that his surgery had gone well, and he would make a full recovery.

She’ll always be grateful to Mr. Naranjan for the time he had given Elwyn. Given them.

Mared pulls back the covers, nestles into Elwyn’s warmth and rests a hand on his chest. His breathing is deep and even.

Beth Webster is a short story writer from Carmarthenshire, currently living in Pontypridd. She is studying part-time for a degree in Creative Writing.

25

Ableist in Aisle 3 DEE MONTAGUE

I’d never been called inspirational until I started using my wheelchair.

In the decades until I sat on Frank’s lap for the first time (yes, he’s called Frank), I’d been called many things, but ‘inspirational’ was never on the list of words applied to my character. They included ‘lazy’, ‘attention-seeking’, ‘dramatic’, ‘jealous’, ‘weak’, and ‘pathetic’. How strange that sitting on a chair with wheels would be the one thing to change that.

My heart sank as my face froze, my expression fixed on the smile that had been genuine up until a moment ago. It had happened again. I’d only popped in to get a few bits, but visiting the Big Tesco any time before 10 pm almost always entailed navigating an obstacle course of non-player characters wearing well-meaning head tilts and patronising smiles. Goblins gawping at me or glaring in disgust.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; Jan had form for coming out with stuff that made my teeth itch. I remembered her slumped over Mam’s deathbed, her sobs punctuated by a speech on how unfair it was that Mam was going to leave us all, as if she hadn’t considered that already. I wish I’d unblocked that memory before I’d called out to Jan, luring her away from the small crowd jostling to get to the yellow sticker ready meals, like a flock of seagulls competing for a dropped kebab on a Saturday night.

The usual script for this kind of conversation involved me mumbling lines that prioritised the other person’s comfort over my own. “Oh, thank you,” I’d say, through a grimace hidden by a fake smile showing too many teeth and flushed cheeks. The aftermath would remind me of those cartoons, my character the one being stalked by a rain cloud over their head, unable to escape it and join in with the happy characters dancing in the sunshine. Although I’d try to get on with the rest of my day, there was no avoiding the distraction of how the interaction made me feel – not just mentally, but physically – my heart would beat faster, only barely masking the ache of disappointment these throwaway comments shot through my chest.

My brain would become a racetrack of conflicting thoughts all attempting daring manoeuvres to cross the line first. It would also play the scene on repeat as I tried to sleep, and in the argument simulator 3000 (some people call this a shower), where I would reenact the conversation over and over again, coming up with things I could have said, I should have said, 18 hours too late.

26

Not today. Maybe it was because I was tired. Perhaps it was the anger that had kept me up most of the night before, so I was more tired than usual. But before I could even filter my thoughts, the words tumbled out of my mouth.

“What is it exactly that I’m inspiring you to do?” I asked.

It was Jan’s turn to look like a rabbit in the headlights.

“Well…I just think it’s very good how you just get on with everything, despite…you don’t let being differently abled hold you back!”

Oh lord. If we’d been somewhere quieter, somewhere less public, I’d have dissected her comments, helped her to understand - despite her form, Jan’s heart was always in the right place, even if her voice took her on diversions to get there. I figured the middle of Tesco probably wasn’t the best place to deliver Social Model of Disability training.

“I’m disabled, Jan, it’s not a dirty word, you’re allowed to say it!” I chuckled, inviting her to learn my language of liberation. She glanced around awkwardly before her eyes settled on the basket in my lap. She did a double-take.

“Are you planning on kidnapping someone?” We laughed together, but before I could answer, one of the goblins who’d scowled at me in the homeware section appeared at the end of the aisle.

“You’re in my way again,” he laughed, but his smile stopped short of his eyes; he was sneering at me.

“Oh, I am sorry,” I sighed with sarcasm. Jan smiled politely, probably in case I knew him.

“What’s wrong with you anyway? You’re too young to need that thing,” he pointed at Frank.

“Bet you’re a bloody faker like the rest of ’em! Staying in bed all day while the rest of us go to work and pay for you, bloody scroungers,” he spat.

Jan’s eyes darted round, as if looking for a dinner lady in the school playground so as she could tell on him.

27

“Am I in bed now, here, in the supermarket?” I asked.

“The supermarket I’ve come to on my way home from work, dickhead?”

As I wondered where the hell my newfound bravery had come from, I glanced over at Jan. She looked furious - for a split second I assumed she was pissed off because the seagulls had claimed all the yellow sticker meals. Before he could say anything else, Jan suddenly looked ten feet tall, towering over him.

“YOU LEAVE HER ALONE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” she yelled.

I had never heard Jan yell before. I had never heard Jan swear before. This was exhilarating! I couldn’t help but laugh loudly, especially as he blushed bright red, shrinking away to scurry off towards the drinks aisle.

I looked at Jan in awe. I had half expected her to defend what he was saying - I often heard “He probably didn’t mean it like that”, or “I’m sure he was only joking”; it was far more comfortable for non-disabled people to assume it was my problem rather than a societal issue.

The crimson rage faded from her face, leaving flushed pink cheeks in its wake. Jan’s eyes met mine, and she burst out laughing.

“Shall we kidnap him?” she asked, gesturing to my basket.

“Ugh, no thanks, I don’t think I want to spend any more time with him,” I laughed, screwing my face up.

“All of this is for the protest…we’re gonna chain ourselves to the railings outside the Government offices, hence the bike locks. And snacks.”

I was half expecting a telling off, but before I knew it, Jan plucked the basket from my lap and started walking away.

“What are you doing?” I called after her.

“What do you think I’m doing?” She shouted over her shoulder. “I’m coming with you!”

I picked my jaw up from the floor and followed my unlikely ally to the checkout.

28

Dee Montague (she/they) lives in Newport with her husband, Dan, and stepdaughter, Aimee. She spends most of her time in her bedroom with their cats, Ahsoka and Bo-Catan. A proudly Disabled and Queer woman (ish), Dee is passionate about intersectional health equity and disability justice.

The Keeper of Hand-me-down Tales DIANA POWELL

We were taken, that summer, to my Aunt ‘Caer-Ithel’. We called all our aunts, then, by the names of the land they farmed. It was easier that way, with so many of them.

All looking the same, all small, plump and chattery, like a gang of hedge sparrows.

‘Put some clothes into a bag.’ My father appeared in our doorway even before cock-crow, hung black against the dawn. ‘Quick now! Help Bethie!’

He turned, then turned again. ‘It’s just… I don’t know what to do with you!’

‘AS IF HE’S EVER KNOWN!’ Mari shouted a lot in those days. Mostly, she yelled at people already gone, like our mother. What she said may or may not be true, seeing it, as you might, from another side. This time, I guessed she was right enough. Now that Mam wasn’t there, I had seen Da looking at us strangely, shaking his head over who or what we were.

Bundled sleep-sunk into Ol’ Myfanwy, we bucked and reared along the track until it found the road. Bone-shaken awake, I began to mark the miles, as my Mother had taught me, to always know your way home, on any journey. It was easy enough, for I knew the route well. We had travelled to it many times during the spring when Mam was ill. And this day, as every day, I read it differently from my sisters, who saw only river, mountain, village: Signpost, milestone, cross and turn. Mine was the way my mother told it—a secret, between her and me. The Water we had left was a magic place, a setting from the Stories.

Look at its colour … look how it changes. Not blue, or grey, but indigo, emerald, milk.

And, hark, how the jangling of the bell reaches out to you, calling you to see the wonders beneath.

As we drove on, my mother's whispering grew louder within me, lilting down on the breeze from the Black heights, where giants roam the top, gathering stones in their aprons, ready to make new chairs.

Simmering up on the mists of the stream, red with the flowers strewn by the meadow maidens, who dance amongst the reeds. Words beating in time to the jolting of the old car; words beating with my heart all along the way.

29

But now we were there, the lulling of her voice gone, all brightness vanished. It was as if the dawn outside had turned to dusk, warmth to cold, making us wonder if time had twisted as well as place. We stood in the middle of the farmhouse kitchen, swapping the coloured magic of our parlour for all the shades of darkness. I rubbed the last of the sleep and surprise from my eyes and found our father gone already, our worrying aunt fidgeting in his place.

‘Come, I’ll show you to your rooms,’ she trilled, leading Mari and Beth away.She didn’t notice how my feet were stuck to the sweat of the flags, nor that the words of the old grey man trapped me. I knew he was there from the smoke that curled above the ancient settle, wafting his spells and his damp shag tobacco towards me.

I knew he was there, because he always had been. After all, it was another thing my mother had told me.

The grey old man in the corner, His father heard a story, Which from his father he had heard And after them, I have remembered.

He was the storyteller, one of the ‘cyfarwyddiaid’. And she was the Rememberer, who gathered the lore from long ago. She called herself the keeper of hand-medown tales, laughingly recalling her dresses after six sisters.

Threadbare, faded, much altered, but still worth having, so your Nan always told me.

Lately, she had passed the tales on to me, the child named for her; the only one who would hark to her, Mari being of an age that no longer listened to Mother, and Bethie was simply too young. But now she was gone, and I didn’t want to hear this old, old man. I didn’t want to go near him. He scared me with his corpse-skin and rancid smell. Besides, his words were spun in the Old Tongue, that we no longer learnt.

They meant nothing to me. I shut my ears, dragged my feet from the seeping stone, and ran after my sisters.

I was put in the top of the Tower, where my mother had slept as a child. At night, lying in her own bed, foetal-curled in the hollow I was sure she had made, I found myself dreaming of her, as I had been unable to do in the months before, when shock still froze my thoughts.

30

By day, I climbed onto the stone ledge, fitting my feet into the worn print of her shoes, and peered through the window. I saw her Magic Land stretched out beneath us, from the mountains to the sun-specked ribbon of distant Water that was home. It was easier than ever to feel Mamma’s crooning here.

‘IT’S JUST THE WIND, STUPID,’ yelled Mari, but I didn’t believe her, just as she didn’t believe in magic lakes, giants, old man’s spells, or any of my mother’s stories. She didn’t know that things are not always like they seem. I was sure I was hearing my mother’s voice; I was sure she was somewhere just out of sight. If only I could find out where…

My mother had gone to a better place. She had passed away, passed on, gone to rest. We were told these things in the Spring, when she left us. ‘She’s gone to be with Jesus,’ our Aunt Tir-Gunter had whispered, choking, into my ear.

‘Your Mam’s quite safe, now,’ sniffed Aunt Tir-Einon, rocking Bethie back and fore, and stirring too much sugar into our tea.

Father had sat us down, as the aunts had told him to do, to explain it all to us, but it was one of those times when he seemed not to know who we were, or what he should say. He sat there, shaking his head, till Mari started huffing and sighing and muttering. So he huffed and sighed, too, before blurting, ‘She… It’s just…’ But he couldn’t find what it was, or the words to tell us, and he rushed out of the room.

In the village, people crossed the road away from us. Even the Old Women in the Square disappeared behind their nets; even the bwgan-girls were strangely hushed. All were gone before I could catch the strange mutterings that floated from behind their hands.

‘They say… walked into the water.’

‘No body found.’

Only Mari seemed sure. ‘SHE’S DEAD. PLAIN AND SIMPLE!’ But why should that be one of the things Mari was right about? After all, there had been no funeral for my mother, as there had been for my Taid or my Nan; no cold box, circled by black suits, no chanting preacher. And now, months later, feeling my mother so close to me, hearing her talking to me, I was even more sure that my sister was wrong.

31

‘Where is my mother?’ I asked my aunt, seeking her out in the kitchen, where she was baking bread. When my mother was mentioned, she cried, as I knew she would, as she always did. She folded me in her fat, floury arms and told me that my mother had gone to heaven.

‘Don’t let anyone say any different.’

But I knew my mother did not believe in heaven, or God or Jesus, or any of those things. She didn’t go to the Church at the bottom of the road that led up the mountain. She didn’t go to Chapel every Sunday, like the aunts, who filled two pews and sang their hearts out, praising their Lord.

My mother was not like her sisters in that way. In all ways. She was tiny, willow-thin and blonde. She hadn’t married a farmer, but chose a man who made things out of wood. She didn’t keep chickens or gather and gossip. Instead, she travelled the countryside, seeking out the ancient books and talking to the old grey men and women, not only her grandfather.

Sometimes, she wrote down their words, in tiny script, in a notebook covered in stardust. She spun wool from her sisters’ sheep, dyed by plants she grew outside our cottage door. Goldenrod, madder, rose. From this , she wove tapestries of the stories to hang on the walls of our tiny cottage, turning it into a place of magic and colour. Now and then, she sold one of these pictures, making a pittance to add to my father’s meagre earnings.

‘YARNS FROM YARN,’ Mari shouted, ‘WHY DON’T THEY GET PROPER JOBS?’ Sometimes, when I think about it, I remember that Mari always shouted…

There were other things about her that called to mind people from her own tales.

She kept our little place clean as a new pin. She baked her own bread, the finest in the county, better, even, than her sisters’, though they had the freshest flour and farmhouse ovens. She loved music and played a small flute, so all the birds joined in.

She grew other plants that she used to make potions, to heal us when we were sick.

Once, when I fell and cut my knee, she ran her hand above the wound, and the trickle of blood faded away. As if by magic.

32

Suddenly, it was all so clear.

My mother was a daughter of the fairy kingdom. Her strangeness, her beauty, her short life – all of these were the traits of the ‘tylwyth’. And of all the bedtime tales she told us, the ones she liked best were those of the Fair Tribe, who leave their hidden palaces and come to live with the human kind, secret and unseen, blessed, but unknown.

‘I think Mamma was a fairy princess.’

I had this way of telling Mari things I knew I should have kept to myself.

‘YOU’RE AS MAD AS SHE WAS! FORGET HER! SHE’S GONE.’ But I couldn’t forget her, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be like Mari, who seemed happier than ever, acting the landowner’s daughter, giving orders to the hired hands, sitting outside in the sunshine, reading her endless romances. Or like Bethie, who wandered about, clucking to the hens, collecting their eggs; who seemed to think our mother had gone on some long holiday, and didn’t mind if she came back.

Or not.

Where was she? Where were the hidden palaces? Where did fairy princesses go?

Where would she go? …caves hidden in the mountains, A secret way by a stream, Circles lost in the forest Leading to a land unseen.

So many places, even in one remembered rhyme. How could I choose? Who would know?

I found myself in the kitchen again, shoes stuck to the stone once more, eyes trapped open, even in the cloud of smoke and dust. I was looking into a cave, its mouth gaping , ready to swallow me into its throat of fire. Flames curled towards me, beckoning me. And hidden inside, waiting for me, weaving his spells over his cauldron, was the goblin king of the mountain.

33

I rubbed the grime out of my eyes and shook the stories out of my head. Not yet; not yet! I was looking at the hearth, at the two oak settles jutting out from the mantle.

And the goblin was nothing more than an old, old man, my great-grandfather.

He had worked this land for years untold, then passed it to his only son. A son who was beguiled by the corpse-candles before his time and his father; a son who left him only daughters, seven of them, the youngest of whom was my mother. And now she, too, was gone…somewhere. I told myself to be brave, but it was hard not to tremble when a bleached bone claw reached out towards me. I told myself I was there to find my mother, and I let the claw wrap itself around my fingers. I stepped forward, into the labyrinth of his words….

Words stumbling over toothless gums and the stem of a pipe. Rhymes wafting up a chimney with the smoke, or melting away in the heat. Tales told in a lost language, or broken in two by a drift of sleep. Day after day, I sat with him, rising early – for it was then, my aunt told me, that he was most likely to speak in my own tongue.

Day after day, I pushed through a dark, tangled forest of root and branch, where snagged words hung, like loose threads, to be snatched and woven back into a story, an answer. If only I could reach enough of them, if only I could fight my way through.

Time had a habit of shifting, back then – time, place, shapes. Or was it fairy-sleep?

At the blink of an eye, the turn of a page, I came out of the cave. Outside, it was still summer. Mari still swung between the sycamores, dreaming of lovers, while Bethie gathered her buckets of eggs. And now I knew where I must go. At last, I had spun together enough words.

I crept out that same night, sure no one would miss me, lost as they all were in their own fairy tales. The Magic Land lay ahead of me. A map of it was locked inside my head, drawn from the Tower window. Besides, all I needed to do was turn topsyturvy my way-marking from the journey here, and aim for the silver ribbon draped on the horizon. All I need do was listen for my mother.

34

I shut my eyes and pictured the Magic Water. Time and place twisted again. I opened my eyes, and found myself back at the beginning, dawn at the old cottage.

There was no sign of Ol’Myfanwy in her usual place. I guessed I had been missed after all, and that Da was out searching already. I knew that I must hurry.

I scrambled to the water’s edge and stared into its depths, waiting to see a fairy-tale palace rippling in the morning light. I looked for the rich orchards, thick with fruit, where the fair folk strolled and feasted. These were the wonders my greatgrandfather had told me about, echoed to me in my mother’s stories. A blessed realm of peace and harmony, where she could rest awhile, before returning to be with us again, healed and happy. I looked again, craning to see the enchanted people, dancing and laughing, calling out to each other, calling out to me. And, most of all, I waited for her voice to herald her coming as she walked from the water back into my arms.

And, yes, her voice came, as before, on the wind keening down from the mountains, on the vapour rising from the pool. But it was not the soothing lullaby I had heard as we left this place, or the la-de-laaing of my infant days.

Listen to the bells ringing, tolling for the dead, the drowned who lie beneath.

Hear their cries, lost as they are, under the dark, cruel water.

Look at the stream running red, coloured by the blood of the fallen warriors.

Look at the stream running black, turning the lake into the colour of the mountains, and the evil spirits that lurk there.

Fairy-palaces abracadabra-ed into cities of bloated corpses. Water changed into blood. Golden people were now black sprites, riding on black horses, come to possess me.

All my sweet-dreaming tales turned into nightmares.

35

A golden princess became my mother, pale and wasted, crying by the lake.

I have seen the red woman. I thought at first she might be a gypsy, camping as they are in the top field. But when she lifted her shawl from her face, I knew.

This is how it happens, this is where you meet them, sneaking about lanes, hiding around corners, the ‘gwrach-y-rhibyn’, waiting for someone to tell them they will die.

A red woman, a big, ugly, red-haired woman-sometimes-man. Changing and changing about, confusing you with their image, but always with the same meaning.

You are going to die. Words spat between crossed fangs in a hideous mouth, spite flashing from the bloody eyes.

Telling me, the message is for me…only me.

This is what she told me when I came across her that last Spring, just returned from the hospital, and I knew it for a tale of death foretold, a fateful warning that couldn’t be denied. Except…

I put my arms around her.

‘It’s just a story. That’s all it is. It’s not true.’

These are the words I said to my mother, the keeper of the tales, and to myself, the believer of the lore.

It was the one story I chose not to listen to, and I locked it away until the water brought it back to me—until I knew, now, that it was real.

Behind me, through the trees, lights and shouts came towards me. They were not corpse-candles or the shrieks of goblins, but my father and uncles coming to look for me. With one last look, I stepped back from the water.

Da took me in his arms and held me tight, tighter than he had ever done before. He dried my tears, and stroked the hair out of my face, and looked into my eyes. And this time, he knew exactly who I was, and found just the right words to say.

Diana Powell is an award-winning author of short fiction. She is the winner of the 2022 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2019 ChipLit Festival Prize and the 2014 PenFro Prize and has been placed in several other competitions. Her work has also been published in several anthologies and journals, such as ‘The Lonely Crowd’, ‘Tears in the Fence’ and ‘The Blue Nib’. Her most recent longer works are ’things found on the mountain’ (Seren) and ’The Sisters of Cynvael’ (Cinnamon), which won the 2022 Cinnamon Press Literature Award. Diana lives with her 36 husband in beautiful Pembrokeshire and, when she is not writing, works in her woodland garden or walks on the coast.

THE CEMETERY WALK LUKE BLAKE Cemeteries hold a special charm for me this time of year.

A brisk wind whispers secrets through the trees, tugging playfully at my hair. The navy sky hangs heavy with a blanket of pewter clouds, threatening a rain that will fall like a thousand sewing needles. The fiery leaves, ablaze in their final act, cast a warm glow on the gravel paths, now crisped by the subtle touch of winter. Yet, a disquiet settles over me. Cemeteries always seemed so peaceful and quiet, a place where one could organise their thoughts and remind them that no matter how bad things are, at least they’re still alive. But now I can feel it. Subtle and low, hidden beneath the silence, is the cracked, unrhymed beat of broken hearts—the strained stream of grieving tears. The usual peace now feels hollow.

The gravel path crunches underfoot, a symphony of autumn under my boots. Scorched orange leaves carpet the ground, each step a soft snap that sends a shiver of delight up my leg. A ghost of a smile flits across my face, a memory sparking to life. I see my husband running through piles of orange leaves. His laughter echoes in my ears, a joyous sound that chases away the frown lines from my face for a brief moment. He turns to me, his face a flurry of child-like excitement, and beckons me to join him. I laugh and call him childish for enjoying the simple act. But something about his chubby cherub face always pulled me towards him into the orange leaves. We would dance. The leaves would flick and swirl around us like the embers on a campfire, cocooning us in our bubble. He would smile and pull me close to his broad chest; the sweet woody smell of his Diesel aftershave would creep up my nose. We would stay like that for what felt like hours. How I long to relive those days.

He was always my biggest supporter, my cheerleader for even the wildest dreams and simplest of joys. I can almost hear him teasing me for being overly sentimental, a chuckle bubbling up from his chest at my childish delight on such a sombre day. Oh, to see that smile again, just once more.

Lost in the memory, my foot catches on a tree root, growing through the gravel path, I stumble, regaining my balance just in time to avoid crashing into an old man who is kneeling by a mossy grave. I turn to apologise to him but he doesn’t look at me. His eyes, glossy with liquid memories, remain fixated on the headstone in front of him. He’s wearing a tweed sweater.

37

A faded collared shirt pokes out from underneath. The worn leather elbows of his sweater whisper unspoken stories, each crease– a memory etched in the fabric. It’s a smart outfit, I would assume, reserved for these visits to his beloved's grave. Perhaps she'd bought it for him? Maybe it was the one he wore on their wedding day, a testament to a love that endured? Or perhaps it was something she'd always liked to see him wearing. His lips are pursed in silent conversation. I watch his hand stroke the engraved name. My eyes wander down to the date 1950 - 2025. Seventy-five years is one hell of a lifetime; people dream of getting that long. My eyes focus on the en dash. A tiny line that’s supposed to encompass an entire life. Every heartbreak that feels like it’ll never heal, every joy that feels so explosive you can’t help but laugh, every holiday surrounded by friends and family, every love that always feels unique and new. How could it? How could any symbol or word sum up the life of a human being? I shake the thought from my mind. I watch him continue to stroke the headstone with his eyes crinkled shut as if tracing a memory. A single tear escapes his eye, tracing a path down his cheek. Even a man as old as him, who I’d assume has suffered many great losses in his lifetime, is still dragged beneath the weighted cloak of grief.

It's funny, I never realised until recently that in cemeteries everyone is so wrapped up in their own grief that they don’t even notice nor acknowledge anyone else. We act like we are the only ones who are grieving. That nobody else could compare their grief with our own. It's a strange mix of being choked by the suffocating weight of loss and the guilt of being alive.

The silence feels deafening. It’s like a bubble that consumes us, a shrinking bubble that tightens around us as we find ourselves desperately clawing ourselves out so we do not suffocate. Screaming muffled screams to anyone who is willing to listen.

Do ghosts mourn the living?

For a place filled with people, alive and dead, the cemetery is awfully lonely. Each person wanders through a ghost of who they were, their vibrance dimmed by loss. A pang of guilt stabs at me - am I becoming one of them? A distant caw of a crow echoes through the stillness, a haunting punctuation mark to the scene. With a forced apology to the old man, I brush myself off and continue the walk, each step drawing me closer to the inevitable.

38

I trudge further, each step echoing the hollowness in my chest. A young woman with a baby sits on a weathered bench, her silhouette framed by the weeping willow behind her. I sink down beside her, the rustle of my clothes breaking the unsettling silence.

We sit, two islands of grief in a sea of headstones, a shared understanding hanging heavy between us. Finally, the woman spoke, her voice hoarse, "I keep expecting him to walk through the door." Her red and tired eyes are sunken into dark hollows, betraying exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch. She clutches the baby closer, its soft coos a stark contrast to the raw ache in her voice.

"I wait for him," she continues, a tremor running through her voice, "the sound of keys unlocking the front door, that stupid ringtone he set for himself– just to hear him say my name."

My hand instinctively reaches into my pocket, pulling out a crumpled tissue. The dampness contrasts sharply with the dryness of her sobs. As I offer it, she looks up from her baby at a headstone in front of us, a flicker of despair crossing her face before she chokes out, "This is unbearable!" and bolts down the path, leaving me with the echo of her grief and the weight of my own.

The willow's weeping branches brush against my face as I stare across the cemetery.

There, a funeral cortege is dispersing, mourners dressed in stark black and white, like extras from a forgotten silent film, mindlessly wander to their cars or through the cemetery. Two figures emerge from the crowd, their resemblance uncannily copied except for hairstyles – one with a sleek bob, the other with a high ponytail that danced with hidden emotion. Were they sisters? Twins, perhaps?

"How can you be so damn chill?" The one with the ponytail shrieks, her voice cracking.

"Mom's gone! I can barely breathe, and you're just...standing there?"

The other sister, her face pale, stammered a reply, "Amria, please. You're causing a scene."

Amria's voice rises again, laced with bitterness, "A scene? I apologise for having actual feelings. Not all of us can be a heartless bitch like you!"

39

The sister with the bob flinches.

"I'm not doing this with you right now."

Amria lunges forward, her grip tightening like a vice on her sister's arm.

"We're not finished!" she snarls.

The sister with the bob, eyes blazing, rips her arm free.

"Amria, enough! This isn't about you. It's about Mam. I’m hurting too, you know! But I've been here grieving since they diagnosed her. I grieved while I cared for her, when she asked when you were coming home, when she died in my arms. That’s when I grieved. I don’t have any more tears left to cry. You come here now , wailing and making a scene.

Where were you when it mattered? You were off gallivanting, living it up, getting drunk and sleeping with any man who’d put up with you long enough. So no, I'm not heartless.

I'm heartbroken. But I'm facing it. I’m accepting that she’s gone. You need to do the same.

This self-pitying act isn't helping anyone, least of all yourself."

Everyone in the cemetery is looking on in silent shock. A hand covers a mouth, a woman and man engage in excited whispers, and I stare with my mouth open in a silent gasp.

The raw vulnerability in the younger sister's voice echoed with the hollowness within me.

Was I, too, running from my own grief?

The stoic sister, her face a mask of conflicting emotions, watches Amria pull a silver flask from her purse. A flicker of something – defiance? despair? – A flare in her eyes before she unscrews the flask with a trembling hand. She takes a big swig.

“Fuck you, Eira” she roars, the raw fury stripping away any pretense. She takes another swig and disappears down the path towards the cemetery entrance.

I sit there for a moment processing what I had seen when a strong sensation tugs at my heart which causes a dizzying wave of what-ifs to crash over me, each a hammer blow to my already fractured mind. My thoughts spin like a kaleidoscope, fractured images of the accident flash before my eyes – the relentless rain, the screech of tires, the sickening thud of metal. One relentless what-if echoes louder than the rest – what if we hadn't been driving? If only we'd taken the bus, stayed home, or did anything else that day.

40

The crematorium clock tower chimes, its harsh clangour shattering the fragile hold I have on myself. I need to get moving, but my feet seem rooted to the spot. I force myself to my feet. My steps falter, each one heavier than the last, as I draw closer to the headstone.

The headstone is beautiful, a smooth white and grey marbled finish with black lettering.

A wave of dizziness washes over me, the world blurring at the edges. The grave yawns before me, a silent, mocking reminder of the future I won’t share with him; I fall into the vast maw. I sink into the earth further and further into the black abyss, I gasp for air but my lungs remain tight, unmoving, the weight of the earth on my body drags me down deeper and deeper into the cold, wet soil. The feeling of being buried alive–suffocating.

Panic claws at my throat, each breath a ragged gasp. The weight of the unlived life, the unfulfilled dreams, threatens to crush me.

It's not fair. Escapes my lips in a whisper.

We had planned out our whole lives. We had dreams, vibrant and alive, now buried beneath this cold stone. My knees buckle, and I crumple onto the hard earth beside the grave. A desperate yearning consumes me– the need to feel his touch again, to hear his laughter, to lose myself in his arms shrouded with his Diesel aftershave. I think of our first dance at our wedding. We swirl around as Elvis Presley serenades us with our own personal love song. My husband– my what a vision he was– handsome in his suit and kilt, brown eyes warm as melted chocolate, and his unruly black hair perpetually tied in a messy bun. In that charming Scottish accent that made me swoon, he’d murmur how happy I made him, promising to show me how much later that night. I pulled away from him, startled by his sudden naughtiness, but his cheeky grin on his sweet cherub face disarmed me. He pulled me back into his arms and told me he loved me.

Now a fire rages within me. Why me? Why am I left alone in the wreckage? A torrent of regrets washes over me. I should have confessed my love more fiercely, shown it in grand gestures and everyday moments. I should have taken more photographs of us – stolen snapshots of our laughter, our adventures, little universes frozen in time. Because time is a relentless thief that steals these precious memories piece by agonising piece.

There he is, my gorgeous husband. Not a day passes where I don't ache for him, every fibre of my being yearning for his touch. The way his eyes sparkled when he spoke, the star-shaped birthmark on his neck, the nervous hand holding during movie scares, more so to comfort himself than me.His smile, with its endearingly crooked teeth, a source of self-consciousness he never needed to have. I miss it all – the whispered "I love you" every morning, the warmth of his breath tickling my neck with each kiss. If only he could hear me.

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Tears stream down my cheeks as I crumple to my knees, a raw scream tears from my throat.

"I love you!"

The words echo in the vast emptiness.

"I miss you! I'm so scared and alone without you," My voice hitches on a sob. He stands above me. He places a single red rose on the headstone “Rhys I’m here.”

Rhys, his eyes red and puffy, slowly blinks as he stares through me. He clears his throat and begins to walk away.

“Please don’t leave me. Rhys, come back.”

I watch my husband, the man I have and will always love, walk away. Further and further.

I reach out, but he’s too far now. My legs refuse to work. I sit sobbing on the grave.

“I don't want to be dead anymore."

A cold wind whispers through the trees, carrying my words away.

Luke Blake (He/They) is a queer and disabled writer who was born and raised in Swansea.

Growing up surrounded by the works of Dylan Thomas influenced them to read and write more actively. They spent most of their childhood either in the library or the cinema. Luke recently graduated from Swansea University with 1st class honours in English Literature and Creative Writing. They are currently undertaking an MA in Creative Writing. They have previously had poetry published in ABABCB Magazine. An excerpt from their stage play was also performed by Fluellen Theatre Company.

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WANT TO READ MORE FROM OUR WORDSMITHS? Nick Pallot Carolyn Thomas She has reviewed for Stand and published poetry in Her work has also been published in several anthologies Anthropocene, Dreich, The Ekphrastic Review, Impossible and journals, such as ‘The Lonely Crowd’, ‘Tears in the Archetype, These Pages Sing and elsewhere as well as stories Fence’ and ‘The Blue Nib’. Her most recent longer works in two anthologies published by Honno Press, Lipstick are ’things found on the mountain’ (Seren) and ’The Sisters Eyebrows and Painting the Beauty Queens Orange, which of Cynvael’ (Cinnamon), which won the 2022 Cinnamon contains her account of life as a gay woman in the 1970s.

Press Literature Award.

CJ Wagstaff Paula Montez His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, Swim Samples of her poetry are available on Instagram at Press, Buzz Magazine and others. In his practice, CJ is @paula_montez_poetry. Her books are also available on interested in exploring interpersonal relationships to place. He Amazon, and her poems are included in various is currently studying for a PhD in creative writing.

anthologies.

Ellen Davies Sarah Rowland Jones Ellen’s work has appeared in a variety of magazine and journals Sarah Rowland Jones has been published in Poetry Wales, including Mslexia, Envoi, Popshot Magazine, The Lonely in anthologies and online (winning competitions) by Seren Crowd and Cheval 10, amongst others. Ellen’s poetry and Eyewear, as well as by Ink, Sweat & Tears and pamphlet, Accent, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2015.

Ellen's short stories have appeared in The Ghastling, Cast a Snakeskin, and in South Africa where she lived for a while.

Long Shadow (Honno, 2022) and Lipstick Eyebrows (Honno, Now back home in Wales, she is Dean of Saint Davids.

2023).

Beth Webster

Luke Blake Beth Webster is a short story writer from Carmarthenshire, They have previously had poetry published in ABABCB currently living in Pontypridd. She is studying part-time for Magazine. An excerpt from their stage play was also performed a degree in Creative Writing.

by Fluellen Theatre Company.

Dee Montague Dee Montague (she/they) lives in Newport with her Manda Eliot Manda Eliot is a Carmarthenshire poet who enjoys spoken husband, Dan, and stepdaughter, Aimee. She spends most of her time in her bedroom with their cats, Ahsoka and Boword events and walking on beaches with her Yorkshire Terrier. She has been published by Poetry Wales, Dreich, ASP Catan. A proudly Disabled and Queer woman (ish), Dee is passionate about intersectional health equity and disability Literary Journal and Panoply. Her poetry features in the justice.

CultureCult ‘Powerless’ anthology and the upcoming Black Bough winter anthology.

Diana Powell Matthew M C Smith. ’The Sisters of Cynvael’, published by Cinnamon Press, and Matthew M C Smith has two chapbooks, Origin: 21 Poems and ’things found on the mountain’, published by Seren.

'Paviland: Ice and Fire' and a collection The Keeper of Aeons And coming soon, a YA novel, published by West Wales’s with Broken Spine. newest publisher, Little Grebe Creatives.

Michael Kelleher Mike is hard of hearing and draws inspiration from that lived experience, the culture and beauty of his adopted home and membership of the Irish diaspora. Mike is delighted, excited and gobsmacked to be included on the Representing Wales 2025-26 programme sponsored and managed by Literature Wales.

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Perry Wyatt Dr Perry Wyatt is a wordsmith and creative from Wales. She has published three books thus far with the most recent being The Burning Tower (2024, Cambria Press).

Alongside screenwriting, she loves audio drama and exploring how stories can be told.

Her poetry has been published internationally.

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Cori Smith-Pimlott

Tom Smith-Pimlott

Cori Smith-Pimlott is a writer and Tom Smith-Pimlott is a editor based in Swansea, originally sometimes-illustrator from Pembrokeshire. In addition to doodling away on the sunny These Pages Sing, she is a fiction shores of Swansea. His editor for Divinations Magazine, an sketchbooks are filled with online literary horror magazine. silly little characters and Cori is a content and horrifying monsters. He has communications manager by day and is studying part-time for an MA also been known to write a tabletop RPG or two. His in Creative Writing at Swansea University. illustrations can be found on She likes to explore grief, Instagram.com/madebydogg relationships, character, and place os and his games on through horror and the uncanny in madebydogs.itch.io liminal spaces.

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These Pages Sing acknowledges the financial support of the Books Council of Wales and Creative Wales

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