Where there are no trees, the earth is an ochre yellow, scored with deep zigzag lines, quite a picture, and the young curled leaves are starting to sprout on the tips of the branches. In the night, when I lie awake, I see sky. A vast violet expanse of sky, a land of beauty that […]

Today language abandoned me. I could not find the word for a simple object – a commonplace familiar furnishing. For an instant, I stared into a void. Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms. Later, I made an inventory of the room – a naming of parts: bed, chair, table, […]

I am trying. And I am afraid. I am afraid to write about side-stepping and feelings and overwork and depression and breakdown because I am still convinced that admitting vulnerability makes me weak, not strong. I am afraid of confirming that I am young and cute and powerless. I am afraid of admitting to all […]

I stand up and rinse the gloves in the sink, but I don’t remove them. Ayoola is looking at my reflection in the mirror.“We need to move the body,” I tell her.“Are you angry at me?”Perhaps a normal person would be angry, but what I feel now is a pressing need to dispose of the […]

In the emails today was one from a former employee, Sara, who worked for me during school holidays a few years ago: ‘Yo Bitch-tits, I need a reference. Here’s the form attached. Make it good, you bastard or I will come and get you.’ So I wrote this and emailed it to her. TO WHOM […]

What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this […]