She hides in the thicket of shadows under the stairs, tucked behind the shabby hedge of old coats, the long-boned broom, the mop nesting its claws in a bucket. She bites her tongue, hooks fingernails into her palm. It hurts less than the end of bedtime stories. She wants to be as small as a […]
Rosie Garland
Rosie Garland: Out of Water
That first time, he grinned. I slid my fingers into his mouth, unrolled the snail of his tongue, sucked it against my own. Now he mumbles excuses. When I reach for him he pulls back, gags at the salt slurp of my lips. He picks off my scales; calls them scabs. My bones ripple beneath […]
Rosie Garland
Rosie Garland is a UK-based novelist, poet and singer with post-punk band The March Violets. With a passion for language nurtured by libraries, she started out in spoken word, garnering praise from Apples and Snakes as ‘one of the country’s finest performance poets’. Her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologised. She […]