Mark Taylor

At school I learned that if you share your chocolate with someone every day, it doesn't make them like you. It just makes them expect chocolate. Of course there's learning and learning. I still seem to end up with no chocolate and someone spreading rumours that

We put two cans on a piece of string and stretched it tight. You said I had to pull good and hard, or you wouldn't hear me. With that distance between us, with the smell of baked beans in my nose instead of the smell of your mum&

At night the postboxes came alive, great red columns stomping down the street, little red cuboids squirming out of walls like lambs from their mothers. We hadn't fed them enough. They swallowed up all the paper they could find, and when that didn't satisfy they swallowed

I made the wish, clear and true, and my fingers tingled. When I flexed them, they moved with freedom and precision: I felt I could have plucked a fly from the air. My hearing had changed, too. I heard tones and rhythms and melodies from the fountain where I had

"Bury me at sea!" He was drunk when he said it, and none of us knew he was dying, least of all the man himself. But he said it a lot, and he didn't say much else before he went. It fell to us to decide

The boy had to make an autumn collage, so we went out gathering leaves. Together on the ground they look so perfect; it's only when you look up close that you see all the flaws. Tears and spots and nibbled holes, and edges already rotting. I thought we&

We got the thick duvet and the big coats down from the loft. We bled all the radiators and had the boiler serviced. We cleared leaves from the gutters, piled up firewood, harvested potatoes. We started writing Christmas cards. Anything to pretend we would still be there when the winter

Fresh brewed like the day, and like the day, they had no time to drink it in. They left it on the counter, steaming, and the day drank it instead. When they came home it was half-gone, stale and strong like them. They warmed it in the microwave and swallowed