The cat knows things nobody else does. You could call them secrets, if you wanted to, but they’re not really. It’s just that the cat pays attention to stuff we never see. There’s things outside our windows we can’t even imagine.
_________
Notes:
1. Written on May 23rd, 2026
__________“Look at this,” said Daniel in a general invitation to everyone around as he stood on top of the hill in the middle of nowhere and then fell down the hill, all the way from the top to the bottom, in a series of strangely inelegant rolls.
“Any idiot could do that,” Claire thought to herself, distinctly unimpressed but too hot to actually bother articulating her unimpressedness.
Ethel, who was on her best behaviour today because her birthday was approaching and she didn’t want to give anyone any excuse to not buy her all the things she was currently dreaming of them buying her, somehow stopped herself from replying to Claire’s unsaid insult, “Well why don’t you, then?”
“Because,” Claire would have replied, but she was still too hot, and also now too thirsty. “I’m not an idiot.”
“She never said you were,” Tina didn’t even say to herself, let alone the others, because she was composing a poem about something, anything, that wasn’t the hill they were standing on, or the sun they were standing beneath.
“Yeah, but she thought it,” Agnes soundlessly mouthed to herself while she unpacked the picnic and swatted imaginary flies away from the food and put plates over the glasses of juice to ward off potential wasps.
“We all thought it,” said Daniel, out loud, and out of breath, having followed up falling down the hill, all the way from top to bottom, in a series of strangely inelegant rolls, with falling up the hill, all the way from bottom to top, in a series of surprisingly elegant rolls, which everyone had missed because they were too busy bickering, or dreaming of bickering, at least, because it was too hot and too close to their birthday and too boring and there were too many flies around for them to actually bother bickering today (or at least until later, when they were no longer in the middle of nowhere, but approaching the edge of somewhere instead).
“Anway,” said Daniel. “Look at this!”
__________
Notes:
1. Written on May 23rd, 2026
__________It had been a lighthouse.
It had been a lookout tower.
It had been an artillery platform.
It had been an observatory.
It had been abandoned (and then reclaimed).
It had been a pirate radio station.
It had been an illegal nightclub.
It had been an art gallery.
Full of artworks designed to rot slowly away in the salted air.
And now, finally, on its 187th birthday, of thereabouts,
it was on fire.
A single candle burning
on a cake made of rock.
___________
Notes:
1. Written on May 8th, 2026
__________“What are you watching, Daniel?” Claire asked.
“Curling,” Daniel said.
“What?”
“Curling,” said Daniel.
“Curling is not a sport, Daniel.”
“It’s a game!”
“It’s not even a game.”
“It is!”
“Is not! Look, they’ve got brooms!”
“So?”
“That means it’s not a game, it’s a chore.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. Remember when Mum told us to play the sweeping up game?”
“Yes! That was so much fun!”
“Daniel! That wasn’t a game.”
“What was it then?”
“She was just making us tidy up the kitchen!”
“Because someone had fallen through the window and then traipsed mud all over the floor?”
“Exactly!”
“So wait, you’re saying that someone’s fallen through the window and traipsed mud all over the ice? At the Olympics?”
“Yes.”
“And Mum’s making them tidy it up?”
“Well, not our Mum.”
“Oh.”
“But someone’s!”
__________
Notes:
1. Written in January 2026
__________Standing sentry outside an abandoned shop
the forgotten vending machine still takes your coins
still dispenses its wares
still waits loyally
day after day
for its old masters to return
___________
Notes:
1. Written in January 2026
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