Rank badges, small bags, books, diaries, notebooks, files… That’s when it caught Razeen’s eye: a weathered, dusty old envelope bearing a faint, unrecognisable logo.

I heard they are changing the dictionary.

When the streetlights flicker, think of every doe-eyed child that the city swallows

Welcome, weary traveler! To my humble abode. Come, come. I'll show you

You know those instances when we start off in the wide, turbulent currents of a river making its way downstream?

Grief is a lonely river, like a fisherman's song with an empty net

If they knew, your mother would have said, “It’s in your head, darling,” and your father would have screamed, “Put that head in the toilet bowl where it belongs.”

In that world, ignorance amassed like water near the roots of a cypress tree.

As I turned around to reply, she was gone.

The place had no soul or spirit left, and it was evident in the colourless walls, the unclean glasses, the empty eyes of the server who left me a menu card.

Or will you bloom into a new life with me? 

“It was where people crafted stories, my boy!”

We grasp on and we hold tight.

I’d never felt sadder at the prospect of not being a part of someone else’s story.

The infallible whiteness of the walls, the omnipresent smell of disinfectants, and the fields of artificial grass come back to me. Swimming before me are visions of smiling children and the legions of overworked childcare professionals constantly at their service. Every blink threatens to permanently relocate me to their world of ceaseless laughter.

It’s God’s funny way of reminding me that all that is received is a gift that is broken.

Dissipated, my thoughts wander finally taking refuge in sleep.

The sun goes down every day when it’s meant to be

A familiar voice echoed behind her as she was about to leave.

The wish itself was pretty mediocre and commonplace, a mundane fantasy to escape the mundane.