My not-quite pilgrimage: the train, the tube cutting the city southeast to northwest – a husband or a chaperone, scared to send me out alone because I was still young. I might have fun without him. I might fall for a girl my own age (she was tall, looked like Kate Winslet and invited me to her flat to drink and chat), run away with her, study something useful at university, write more terrible stories. Instead there I sat with men ten, twenty years ahead of me, reading sad he

In waking moments, she dreamt of only blue skies. A rolling summer like the hills on her bedsheets. Time still to share with the body carving a shape into the right side of her mattress. Sun forever blinking out from between tree leaves that cast shadows on her wall. A bee knocking its head on the inside of her window. She wanted it like that always. So when September came, the sun stayed. They opened the curtains to blue skies every day. A summer just

How to de-construct a family REMOVE PART A FROM PART B My family is a building site. We can slide from top to bottom in 10 seconds to avoid all those messy in-between floors. Problem 1: Those in-between floors need building too. INSERT PART C INTO PART F In our house, someone left the sand out and it rained. Now the sand covers everything. It's like egg shells th

Eating Fried Chicken with Ballerinas in Central Park Sitting in the west side of Central Park, three ballerinas force-feeding me fried chicken. I take a leg for good measure. There’s a six-pack of thighs and no one is eating the solitary breast. Perhaps it’s just way too much cluck. There are sides and hyped-up mineral water and those big fat dill pickles that they used to sell at the movies. They are like silly school girls with serious dispositions. How and why they picked

Read 'You told me what is essential...' from Johnathan Minton, which is part of a longer work 'Letters'.