Once in a mall I went to to look at a shelf a young man had passed. And I found that I kept returning to the spot pretending to inspect the shelf because he had left his perfume behind and it was the perfume of young men who can’t afford […]

Once in the movies, I moved seats, angry, sensing the rising of the storm, the end of all good things. How I wept back then. Clutching my chest as if it had broken open. The end of the world came every day then, the start of a new one too, […]

Sometimes in the right water, just when immersing myself I recall the moment at the backdoor. The stars, the pool of yellow light from the bulb above the door. An embrace so warm I am forever lost in its folds, even now underwater, many years on.

This morning I thought I lost yet another favourite earring. My Kashmiri tiger eyes from Dal lake in Srinagar. I spent the morning searching for it and complaining and generally being upset, wondering how I always lose one of my favourite earrings. Eventually I gave up and put the lone […]

Once, I was a real person.Real hands and nose,real memories,not shards,not pieces,not bits, and a heart as fullas the moontonight

It’s a summer night in Durban and abba is teaching mamma how to swim and my feet is in the water and I am telling mamma, ‘Kick harder, kick harder,’ and mamma is trying to kick and the water is so blue I can see everything and the night is […]

I fear sadness now,knowing what it can do, turn my head away from it,bow my eyes in the face of it,delicately,at my edges it pecks,but I am covered in layers of tissue,ice on the edge, and yet, yet,at the right moment,in the right breathwith the right sort of eye, I […]

Once in Madison Square, I stopped a woman with a pram and she took a photo of me next to a sculpture and I was wearing my big jacket and I had to put my bag down, behind me and I kept turning back to check on my bag and […]

There’s never quite a summer like a Durban summer. Each November I anticipate the heat with growing dread. I begin preparations by checking that the air-conditioning units are working, that their remotes have batteries and that all stocks of insect repellent are replenished. Next everything gets moved to the fridge; […]

Mulder: I saw things Scully. Powerful things. I saw deep and unconditional love. Scully: I saw things too. I witnessed unqualified hate. That appears to have no end. Mulder: How to reconcile the two? The extremes of our nature. Scully: That’s the question. Maybe the question of our times. (Babylon […]