A sense of timing
Cheerfully, the doctor plunged the needle into her chubby thigh.
   "Don't worry about all that grit in your knee," he said, in a mock-serious tone. "Most of it will wiggle out. The rest will work its way to your heart and kill you when you're ninety."
   Then he laughed.
She carried the scars of that fall all her life - a slip on the wet leaves, an ankle twisted over the kerb and then the perfect glide on face and knees, body arched to save the new patterned anorak she'd worn for the first time, that wet October day.
   She'd been cautious on slippery surfaces ever after, avoiding skating and skiing, distrusting mud. Seventy-eight years of watching her step. No more accidents for her.
   She looks at her scarred knees and wonders about the doctor's comment.
   Tomorrow will be her ninetieth birthday.
   Today, there's no sign of the grit.

Breaking Dad
Through the crackled panel of the door you see him lying at the foot of the stairs; a grisly painting in mosaic. Blue of the pyjamas he's been wearing since Thursday, white of the skin that never sees sunshine, and crimson of something terrible... up near his head. The picture is all joined together like the tiles on an ancient temple's floor. Beautiful but damaged.

Yesterday he had been more difficult than usual. Said that without her he didn't know what to do with himself. Every morning he got out of bed and just wanted to die. You shrugged it off. He has always been melodramatic. Even before the heavy curtain came to lock his memories down.

She is in hospital and your only job was not to break dad while she was gone.

You fumble the key in the door, your heart pounding.

A Private Thing
It’s her across the landing’s turn to clean the close. I have to tell her every time, even though she knows the rota fine well. I make sure they know the drill when they move in, but young ones are that lazy these days.

Not like it used to be. We took pride in the closes when I was a young bride. Just as important as how you kept your ain flat.

Haven’t seen her for a couple of days. The usual shouting and banging, her screaming, weans crying, him stomping off, hasn’t been happening. It’s been quiet for a while. Just the weans crying now and then, but softer.

None of my business, mind. Marriage is a private thing. But it’s her turn to clean the close, so I’ll give her door a chap later. Aye. Later. Or maybe tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll just clean the close myself.

Mudskipper
You came in a rush when the river rose, my waters breaking as the dam burst upstream. Your screams rasped like mewling cats. As we clustered on rooftops you sucked hungrily at the air.

It was only when the waters receded that your colic calmed. We would lay you on a blanket outside while we dripped sweat over the reconstruction, watching the mudskippers flip and flop across their aqueous domain. Each unlikely flight pulled your eyes wide with wonderment.

Today, I read about the mudskippers' gills, and the tiny bubble of air they trap inside, that perfect pocket of survival. Many years have passed since we lost you to the mud. I guess your bubble burst too soon.

Vitruvian Man
Three mirrors hinge in an arc around you. The corners of your eyes catch either side of your face, one in shadow, one in light. Beyond the reflection of your bare shoulder, the sun and moon hang together in a square of sky framed by a veiled window. 

You twist the lip gloss and trace the fine bristles in a smooth arc across the bow of your epithelium. You fold a tissue and smudge a rose of colour onto the white pulp. The shade reminds you of your wife, gloved hands pruning and planting, weeding and watering. 

You slide a cap over your crown, lift the hairpiece from the faceless mannequin, and secure it with a few drops of spirit gum. 

You slip into the silk dress like a second skin. 

You stand with your arms outstretched, legs parted like the Vitruvian Man. 

A perfect square, a perfect circle.

The Writing Process
Draft 1: Steve bought a cup of coffee.
 
Draft 2: Steve bought an extra-tall, triple-shot, non-fat latte.
 
Draft 7: Steve bought a grande latte from the pretty girl behind the counter.
 
Draft 11: Steve bought a latte from the smiling waitress who reminded him of his mother.
 
Draft 24: Steven Blake purchased a foamy latte from the waitress who looked uncannily like his mother.
 
Draft 46: Steven Palmer-Blake pulled out his gold credit card and paid the pretty waitress for his triple-shot, extra-tall, non-fat, extra-foam, mocha-latte with extra sprinkles, all the while thinking how much the waitress looked like his recently deceased mother.
 
Final draft: Steve bought a cup of coffee.

Blaško
“Here in Moklište, every story is like the cosmos, with ever-smaller systems fitting neatly into one another – a galaxy, a planet, a continent, a country, a province, a town, the present, the past, the grandpast, the great-grandpast and so on, until we get to the myths, which are each based on their own stories, passed down from generation to generation.”
    His voice fills the library like the creaking of a waterwheel, churning in the stream of his thoughts. He pauses. In the candlelight, the suits of armour, petrified by dust and web, hold their breath. Only when the pilgrim looks up from his hands, sleeping on a bed of shavings in his lap, beside his penknife and the whittled stake, does Blaško continue.
    “You can never tell the whole story, which is why it is always best to begin at the end. The present. Where we are now.”

Bar

Dumped. On the edge of Leeds, just a stone’s-throw-away from dead-end-alley which she teeters down in her six-inch heels and fake furs ‘bloody useless’ against brutish winds. She’s feeling out-of-sorts.

The doorman dressed in his best, draws back from the devilish cold as our blue lady enters and sheds off her skins into the closet. She rouges her lips then click-clacks across marble to sit high at the bar and fiddle fingers around rings, till the man unhangs a polished glass on display and swills in a G&T to slide over. Another double, he positions by her elbow and jerks his thumb at a smoking silhouette in a hat. She keeps her bright eyes away from rebel’s corner, but quaffs a hand under her hair, swivels her twizzler to excite bubbles to fizz in her gin and wonders where a warm taxi might take her as she sips her pick-me-up.