Sit with me a little

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

We can hear the screaming.

Can you hear the screaming?

How does it sound to you?

Is it loud or is it drowned out?

There is a little clump of dandelions out there

in my garden.  Their flowers are yellow.

The cherry tree has a blight of blossom

on some of its branches.  They wave in the wind.

I want to get closer to the dandelions but

there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un spoken.

I can hear the gulls now.

They were here before

And they will be here after.

A striped towel is flapping on the washing line

and the bucket of pegs is full of water.

I want to count the dandelions,

I want to wait and tell the time with their clocks.

But there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un speakable.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me,

this April afternoon.

Just Aphasia I’m Going Through

The Doctor points out the bubble-like alien parasiting my brain. Looked like an embryo was growing there. A second me. Swiping a second-hand consciousness. Paying me neither rent nor mind. Yet taxing me a tithe of my cells. The bare faced cheek of it. Tithe not shaved in a month now. To my delugeded pain receptors, the razor felt like it was scooping out the inside of my skull. He indicated that the tumours were now squatting against the language centres of my brain. Journeying to the centre of me. I say squatting, squat-trusting may be more opposite, I mean apple sit. I doughnut what I mean. Less than hole.

These days find I can’t finish my sentences. Used to finish those of others in my eagle anticipation. I was agnawing like that. The shoe on the other boot now. The ironing being others have to guest my words, to figure out what I’m trying to slay. This thing willow the death of me. Though there will no me to speak of, since I would have longing surrended any bill utility to espresso myself. The memories will be longing lost, since I will lactate the romps reculling them. I will an empty, wordless shell. Like cancel the crab, chew more up of me (that one I did on purpossum, I’m not quiet shotput yet, not when I shotput what’s left of my mind to it).

They slay I’m slearning my words. Languish is defecting me. Splaying possum. I wish langwish…

By Marc Nash

That Tearing

By Bernise Marie D. Carolino

Let’s read a story you say with the book open on your lap as you sit me down next to you and we turn the pages and as we are reading we are also writing the story as we go along and as the papers rustle they echo strangely in this empty room and it is all a lie because the book is on the table and my hands are on the pages and they are all mixed up because at some point the book got so worn it lost its spine and its order and you say let’s read a story but you were lying and I am lying to myself and you aren’t here anymore and I crumple the pages and I fold what I can’t bear to discard and I know I will hide them all over the house so that I can forget them and keep finding them for years to come and so maybe I still can’t forget you completely but the point is a paper that’s open and unfolded is so much more easily torn.

Li Shin thought about how she wanted them to find her.  She would rest her head to the side.  Her grey hair, which she twisted into a bun every morning, and held together with six small black pins and no more, would face them as they entered the kitchen.

At the doorway they would see her bun and the strawberries laid out on the table. Skin washed and leaves cut off, ready for them to eat.  That morning she was the only customer at the fruit stall.  The Japanese seller and she did not say a word as she pointed to the strawberries and he signalled the cost.  

In Tokyo she did not interact with the Japanese outside of their stores, though she had once been in a ballroom filled with Americans, British and a few other Chinese.  Her son, in his uniform, had taken her hand and told her how beautiful she looked as she followed his lead, in a bright green dress, around the room.

Since her daughter in law arrived from Shanghai, Li Shin spent almost all her time inside.  She cleaned and prepared meals and listened to their talk.

When the war ended, Li Shin ran out onto the streets with her neighbours and cried and laughed and screamed.  It had been years since she stepped outside without rubbing her face with dirt or excrement.  When she died, she left her face clean, untouched, in Japan.  She thought of her son’s life here.

Karla Ch’ien

Him & Her.

‘I’m falling apart’, he joked, rubbing his throbbing left wrist.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even look up from the television that blared out like a wall between them.

He sloped off to bed and slept, despite the noise from the room below and the jolts of pain shooting down his left arm.

She went to the pantry and returned with the gingerbread man and bit down.

He awoke screaming. His left hand was missing, like it had never existed in the first place. The skin had perfectly sealed the stub of his arm.

Her tongue licked at the gingerbread crotch.

He produced an exuberant erection.

She continued.

He cried for his missing left hand, but couldn’t resist reaching down to touch himself with his right.

She bit the gingerbread man’s right hand clean off.

He thrashed and shrieked and shouted as his right hand disappeared before his very eyes.

She yanked up the volume on the television.

He wept like a deserted baby.

Her teeth chipped off the icing mouth.

He couldn’t scream or shout any more.

She ate it all up until it was just a head with confectionary eyes.

He took up significantly less space in the bed.

She picked the eyes off, one by one.

He was left in the dark.

She finished him off with a crunch.

Silence.

She walked upstairs.

He wasn’t there.

She brushed the gingerbread crumbs off the sheets.

He had fallen apart.

She finally laughed.

Don’t forget to enter the Flash Fiction Prize we are running in celebration of The Elegant Art of Falling Apart by Jessica Jones, which we are crowd-funding for UK publication. The deadline for entry is tonight (31st May) at midnight.

Click here to find out more about the writing competition and how to enter, and you can click here to read an excerpt of Jessica Jones’ book as well as find out how to get involved in its publication in return for anything from an ebook and first edition hardback (with your name in the back of every copy ever) to a goodie bag of natural beauty products and invites to the launch party.

In celebration of Jessica Jones’ book The Elegant Art of Falling Apart being crowd funded for UK publication by Unbound, we have launched a free to enter flash fiction writing competition!

All short listed entries will be published on the Unbound blog.
First place: A beautiful signed flower portrait by Jessica Jones (worth £200-300)

Second place: A signed first-edition hardback of The Elegant Art of Falling Apart

Third place: £20 of Unbound credits

Click here to find out the rules and how to enter the competition.

Good luck!