Mark Taylor

They told her she should take up painting, for the stress. She painted the new moon, the bottom of a mineshaft, the inside of an oyster. They said she might at least try to take it seriously. She said, there is the pearl, the gold, a world all bathed in

On a still night, I can hear them singing from my doorstep. For a week I thought it was my imagination. For a month I thought it was next door's radio. Now I know it's them, just over the lake, singing together for the joy of

It made him a laughing stock, that book. It would be one thing if nobody had read it, but you see it all over. In charity shops, in remainder bins, next to gurning faces on YouTube. And there I am, trapped in the dedication. Without whom this book couldn'

Clara and Tom had a wishing-well in their back garden, only there was no hole. It hadn't been filled in, either. It was never there. They got their handyman to come and build a wall and a roof and a crank, and they hung an old bucket from

All my life I have been frightened of the stars going out. I suppose I must have seen it on the television when I was small. But now there are a thousand more stars in the sky, and the night is more beautiful than ever. When I stand underneath it

In the dream I am in an exam I haven't prepared for. The usual thing, old anxieties standing in for new. I'm wise to it now, even asleep. At some point, I remember that my schooldays are over, and I fold the paper into an aeroplane,

By the time her postcard arrived, my house had already burned down. The postie left it on the ash pile where the front door used to be, along with the bills, and a note saying "We tried to deliver your parcel but you were out". A pint of

When they chained the sea-thing we all knew it wouldn't hold. A flick of its great winding limbs would break the chains, or else the foulness it exuded would slip it free or eat the links away. It would roar and drive men mad until they loosed it