THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT FROM OUR RECENTLY PUBLISHED NOVEL THE LAST SUMMER OF HAIR. Now that he is back in town, he turns his attention to practicalities. He makes appointments – agent, work, accountant – and steels himself for the inevitable reunion with Aneetha Jharavindra. They agree to meet in the city. At a…
My ten year love letter to no one
The art of the billet-doux is not dead (and neither am I) You may well ask – with some justification, I might add – why anyone would dedicate themselves to the writing of over 600 love letters across a ten year period without sending any of them. You may also wonder for whom these unmailed…
For the beautiful strangers
Though we are yet to meet, and may never, I know, by instinct, precisely who you are. I see you, fully formed, in the blinding dazzle of sunlight. I feel you, present and textural, in the warm murmur of golden evenings. I sense your approach, rising, in the abundant promise of spring. Intoxicated, I can…
They are all you
Ever since I met you, I have always known. It is not that they are shadows, nor you their ghostly forebear. Neither do they replace you, or simply stand in your place. They shall not follow in your wake, nor wear thy lovely crown. The shiver of your love shall not be stilled in their…
If we might still mend it with kindness
Already, it has begun. The slow uncoupling. The incremental shifting of orbit. The quiet cellaring of doubts – earmarked as likely ammunition. Yet I wonder if we might still mend it with kindness. For not so long ago we were a kind, as though we had reached across the unbridgeable gulf between souls and seen…
Watch our award winning ‘meta’ romance!
TWO is an award winning ‘meta’ romance; where the post-modern boy/girl thing suddenly gets very real and the rules of engagement change forever. Love may well be a game – until you get hurt. Because one & one will always make two. Shot in around St Kilda in 2010, this minimalist 53 minute romance was…
Love letter # 519 Please wait, you said…and in the ark of patience I loved you…until the distance became just that…a space beyond traversing…and then another, a fire closer than hope and memory. Please forgive me…I failed the test of time and distance…looking across the chasm of waiting…desire dissolving in increments to a numb new…
Love letter # 720 I desire you now as I did not before. I desire you now as I will not again. My desire changes each time you move. For as you move, so are you changed.
Love letter # 473 However much I would like to talk to you, I am sabotaged. Perhaps it is shallow and silly to admit, but I am befuddled by your form and flow. Words catch and break. Mature demeanour disintegrates. I get sweaty. It’s terrible. The irony of your beauty is that you will most…
Love letter # 671 You nearly had me fooled. Believing it was me. Then I saw you do the same with others. The smile, the posture, the close attention. Yet I shall not curse you. My stumbling is my imbalance. You are merely utilising the advantages given to you by nature. I would do the…
Love letter # 835 How many roads have I travelled in search of belief? Schools of thought, ancient philosophers, the many isms and ideologies; these have been my citadels of faith. All have crumbled. Their gods are not merely slain but revealed to be little more than idols of fantasy. Yet I have gladly set…
Love letter # 656 What if you are happier elsewhere? What if this is not working for you? Would I hold on? Would there even be a point to that? If I saw that look in your eye – that gazing into the distance of another – would I love you enough not to close…
For my vanished Valentines
You. All of you. Seeping through cracks in time. Splinters in splintered memory. Each of you left behind, embraced now by distance; from which I may regard, with detached perspective, the folly of erstwhile excess and the dry ache of ancient deprivation. What was I thinking? The unkept promises, the self-pitying dramas, the cruel indecisions….
Love letter # 506 What do you say when someone notices that you keep looking away? I thought about lying. Instead, I just said, “Because it’s hard to look at you.” What is it about the body – its presence, its lines, its promise – that obliterates other niceties? I pushed the plate aside. “Not…
Love letter # 482 Once we sang along. We were amazing. We did amazing things. Did we ever believe it, or did we always know? Look now in the mirror, my love…there is the truth of us. In cold glass. Our ordinary outcome. We said a lot of things. They did not come to pass….
