Author Archives: matt

Grassington. Stones strewn across the hillside like a lazy monument to those best forgotten. He stands by a stile, smiling, my indomitable brother. Through a forest, a path carved aggressively, gravel lined an awkward wound through the foliage. The canopy … Continue reading →

Even in therapy, I think, I couldn’t be honest. For months I’d talk around the issue. The immediate is harrowing, impossible, and my ability to interpret, to express that is lacking. At times, it feels like I can only communicate … Continue reading →

It comes from within. A feeling. Something unsettling, lying there, lurking just beneath the surface. With time, with all this fucking time, it seems to become a neutral state, and so you try to accept. It can feel like this … Continue reading →

Remember me? Let’s break down barriers, forget ourselves, slip into a non-specific emptiness of ego-less aught. What is left? What trace, what stain remains upon the ground we have traversed? “Remember me?” asks WordPress as I sign in again. Remember … Continue reading →

Degradation. Decay. The slow and inexorable loss of meaning. It’s all just slipping away, breaking down, collapsing into senseless noise. Vision disrupted, blurred, indistinct – a haze of static clouding your memory. Events, order, that passage of time, your own … Continue reading →

You sit at the pub, with friends, like a real person, like real people do, but the sky won’t let you stop. It starts to ignite, vividly unsettling whatever peace you had hoped for.

I’m in a wine shop, not my own, helping out, being managerial, questions about whisky, I end up purchasing several bottles of bourbon. For a moment, the bar in a hotel I’ve visited several times in the past. Drinking whisky, … Continue reading →

In April last year I travelled to Weymouth. This was a momentous occasion for me, you see, it had been over three years since I had enjoyed a solitary break, a journey to the seaside on my own. It was … Continue reading →

Does it begin here or does it end? Is this building coming apart, vanishing from memory, or only just taking shape? Has it come to a halt, or is this just a break? Time’s always slipping away from us. Do … Continue reading →

Thankfully, I no longer have the notebook. Left in a bag, lost on a train. Would I want to read what I’d scribbled, starved, drunk, alone in a hotel room, by the sea? It’s always the same. But isn’t that … Continue reading →