The Gallery
A hand-picked shelf of favourites — each one began as three random cards and became a single small story.
Lighthouses · A Missed Train · Hope
Schedules No One Keeps
The lighthouse kept a schedule no one had asked it to keep, sweeping the same dark water out of nothing but habit and faith. She missed the train on purpose that night, just to stand and watch it work. Some forms of waiting, she decided, are not failures of arrival but a kind of arrival themselves — a way of saying I am still here, and so is the light.
Foxes · An Empty Café · Forgiveness
After Closing
The fox came to the café after closing, as if it too had somewhere it could not stay. I left the door open and we kept each other company in the dim, neither of us belonging. We forgave one another for nothing in particular — which is, I have learned, the hardest and most necessary kind, the kind you give before anyone thinks to ask.
Astronauts · A Phone Box · Longing
Faster Than Light
He called from the edge of everything, just to hear it ring. The phone box on the corner glowed like a small, stubborn moon, holding its little circle of warmth against the street. Longing, it turns out, travels faster than light: it was already home before he finished dialling, already waiting in the kitchen with the lamp on.
Clockmakers · A Flooded Street · Joy
The Hour It Kept
The clockmaker let the water rise around his ankles and laughed out loud. Every clock in the shop disagreed about the hour, ticking its own small argument into the flood. Joy, he decided, wading among them, was the single thing in the room that kept no time at all — that asked nothing of the future and forgave the past for running late.