The Catalogue
Every light in the sky, written down. A quieter way through the archive, for reading in order or without the stars.
Prototype — every trace here is fictional
Things Never Said
4 lights
Words that stayed in the throat.
- HA—0001Dad, Mum told me you read my letters from university twice. I never told you I wrote them twice too. Once to say what I meant, and once to say what I…
- HA—0002To the woman on the night bus who saw me crying and handed me a clementine without a word: I peeled it so slowly. It was the only thing I did right…
- HA—0003Everyone believes I left the band over the music. I left because I was in love with our drummer, and he was getting married, and I couldn’t play the…
- HA—0004I told my sister I was fine with selling the house. I wasn’t. The night before the new family moved in, I went back and stood in the garden for an…
Moments That Stayed
4 lights
Small hours that refused to fade.
- HA—0005A power cut in July. The whole street came outside because it was too hot to sleep. Somebody’s grandfather played the accordion badly and nobody…
- HA—0006My son, aged four, held my face in both hands in the middle of the supermarket and said, very seriously, “You have a good face.” Then he went back to…
- HA—0007The last morning of the trip, my grandmother and I sat on the hotel balcony and didn’t speak for an hour. The sea was very flat. She put her hand on…
- HA—0008First snow, in a city where I didn’t know anyone. At two in the morning the streets were completely silent, so I lay down in the middle of the road…
Other Lives
4 lights
The people we almost became.
- HA—0009In another life I took the job in Lisbon. I’d be fluent by now. I’d have a small blue balcony and a cat with a ridiculous name. I don’t regret…
- HA—0010Somewhere, I didn’t leave medical school. I’m good at it. My hands are steady. But I don’t think that version of me paints, and I don’t think she…
- HA—0011In the other life, I picked up when he called that night. Most days I don’t let myself walk down that road. Today I went a little way along it. It…
- HA—0012Between the ages of eleven and fifteen I was a lighthouse keeper in every daydream I had. Now I do payroll for a logistics company. On bad days I…
The Ones We Lost
4 lights
Still here, in the way that counts.
- HA—0013My best friend died at twenty-six, and her voicemail greeting stayed active for almost two years. I called it whenever something good happened. When…
- HA—0014We lost the baby at fourteen weeks. People stopped mentioning it after a month. I just want to write down somewhere that she existed. That we had a…
- HA—0015My mother’s handwriting is on the spice jars. Cumin. Paprika. “The good salt.” I’ve moved house three times and refilled them every time. I will…
- HA—0016Our dog waited by the door for my brother for a whole year after he moved out. Then my brother stopped coming back, in the way some people do. The…
Reasons to Stay
4 lights
Small, stubborn lights.
- HA—0017The smell of bread at six in the morning outside the bakery on my corner. Last winter I made a deal with myself: just one more morning of that smell…
- HA—0018My niece is learning to read, and she wants me, specifically me, to hear her practise on Thursdays. She sounds out every word like it’s a door she’s…
- HA—0019I haven’t finished the book. Not reading it — writing it. Seventeen chapters, all of them rough. Somebody out there needs chapter eighteen, even if…
- HA—0020Honestly? Spite, at first. Then curiosity. Now something I’m starting to think might be hope, though I’m not ready to say it out loud. I’m saying it…