It was the kind of quiet you only notice in high-end department stores on weekday afternoons, with its low lighting, plush carpeted floors, and overhead speakers playing a song you used to love. Most of the items were well out of Madelyn’s price range, but this was the store the engaged couple had chosen for … Read more
The first time they bumped into each other, she was holding a bouquet, and he was giving a bride away. She could feel him looking at her, and she blushed the same color as her peonies and tried not to smile more than the beatific Mona Lisa half-grin she’d had plastered on her face all … Read more
A long-form cinematic love story — two people meet again after years apart, and an evening asks them to weigh memory against the future. Emotive, filmic, open-ended. 1 — The Photograph He Couldn’t Delete There was a photograph on Julian’s phone he could not delete. It was imperfect: blurred edges where her hand had moved, … Read more
1. He hadn’t meant to idealise her, to put her on a pedestal, to overwhelm. Radiant, she was. She drew people in, shook their hands, pulled up chairs for them. Are you the organiser? she’d been asked. No, she wasn’t. Just a woman with a smile, a woman in a sundress who scooted over and … Read more
An old ritual. Folded letters. A river that remembers. Two lives drift within the same small town until winter carries their paper promises back to shore. 1 — The Habit There are habits that are private and shameful and keep you honest all at once. Mara’s habit was paper boats. Not the thin children’s kind … Read more