Bird Brains
It’s their highly responsive MHV! Aurelia said, adopting that high-flown tone of hers. They were discussing the intelligence of birds. Aurelia had edged the conversation in that direction, maybe as a way of proving, if proof was needed, how very clever she was. Her PhD had been on avian cognition: Thinking Psittacinae-fashion. She had spent two years in close communication with a rather bright parrot, for a while student and ‘guinea pig’ becoming almost inseparable.
Appetites
The strange thing about those first empty weeks without her was his ability to carry on as before: to sleep, to eat, most afternoons, to even spend time in his studio, though producing nothing of worth, the clay resistant to his touch, unable to be shaped to his will. And yet he could still go in there, could still structure his day with breakfast, lunch and supper, the scaffolding without which he might fall apart. But how could…
Death and the Maiden
Watching him had become a comforting pastime, a part of her life. Something she did when washing the dishes; she seldom used the dishwasher now. He was someone to look down on as she hand-washed her ‘delicates’ – previously tossed into the washing machine without a thought. These so-called delicates even extending to barely worn…
Cold Snap
The removal van’s outside again. Six owners, now, in only twenty years. Folks don’t seem to stay around for long. Spend all their money doing the place up nice, then bugger off. Well . . . I say, nice. Too many fancy shades for my taste. That dining room’s been all the colours of …
Dick’s Life
My wife slips quietly from our bed, silencing the programmed alarm clock before time, so as not to disturb her sleeping husband. But her husband is awake; I have woken before her, and feign sleep as she moves about the darkened room. She takes underwear from the chair (removed from the drawer with the jingling brass…
“I think of her sometimes: the woman who walked into the bar…”