• Contemporaneous: A Living Novel

    Contemporaneous: Chapters 23 – 24

    23. Like when the car hit me, there’s no pain. But there is a sudden sense of shearing, of weight falling from me until all the aches of being almost fifty, the pain in my foot and leg, the tiredness in my body, and the inebriation in my head, shred, like they’re nothing more than tissue paper holding me, and I’m immersed in a thick grey mist. And I see everything because, as the cliché goes, it’s almost like life flashing before my eyes, but instead it’s a rapid recount: my birth; running happily around as a kid; school and my first teacher, am amputee without a right hand, which…

  • Sixty-One

    Contemporaneous: Chapter 20

    20. I wake in the morning, grab my phone from my bedside drawer to check the time, and instead find a message from Lana: I just want to say that as somebody who cares for you and loves you, it hurts me whenever you make me feel unwanted, like I’m a burden in your life. It feels like I always have to scrap for your time, and when I’m with you, you’re neither verbally or physically affectionate. We’re more like friends to you it seems. I don’t know why or how it became like this but it’s grown progressively worse over the last year. I regularly wonder where I place…