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Continue reading →: The Fair CopyThey told me to make the past safe. To turn a man’s scream into silence. I gave the Army their fair copy, but in my pocket, I hid the truth. Ink is permanent, even when it is forbidden.
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Continue reading →: The Space Between the Row HomesYou ask about relationships? At eighty-nine, I’ve learned the best ones aren’t always in birthday cards. It’s the neighbour salting my steps, the river that remembers my history, and the friends who stayed when everyone else left.
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Continue reading →: The Key UnturnedI gave freely whilst I lived, and men spoke well of my name. But generosity without labour is a locked gate with no key. Hear my warning from these Roman stones, you who think reputation enough.
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Continue reading →: Colour TheoryMr. Baranowski asked what colours my sports team would be. Everyone else picked their favourite clubs. I picked rust orange and Delaware blue-grey – the colours New Corinth actually is, not what developers want it to be.
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Continue reading →: Not YetThou askest how a Flemish woman came to lie in this English sickhouse? I shall tell thee of blood spilled, tempers flared, and the stubborn refusal to die. The wheel turns, but I endure. Not yet will I yield.
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Continue reading →: The CrossingI still cross the street when I see a young Black man walking towards me after dark. The 1990s carved this reflex into me, and thirty years later, I can’t seem to unlearn it. That’s my shame.
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Continue reading →: The Painted StarsTwenty-eighth of December, down in the chalk workings again. Following badger tracks deeper than I should, torch nearly dead, thinking about stars painted on stone and what it means to carry light into places where light was never meant to go.
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Continue reading →: Windows on the WaterAt eighty-five, I’ve learnt that perfect writing spaces aren’t built – they accumulate, like silt in a river bend. My room has sloping floors, my father’s scarred desk, and windows on Minerva Creek. It’s exactly right.
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Continue reading →: The Company of the DeadThey call me mad for dwelling amongst the stones and bones of the dead. Yet here I have found such rapture as no living congregation ever granted me. Draw nigh, and I shall tell thee why the grave brings greater joy than any gathering of the quick.
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Continue reading →: A Clerk’s Reckoning upon St Stephen’s FeastI write this from stone and shadow, my lip split by a fat archdeacon’s ring, my future fled with my temper. They feast above whilst I reckon what justice costs a rash man. Three pennies remain, and less mercy still.
Feign the virtue thou dost seek, till it becometh thine own
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