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A Living Series of Collected Work

RETURN TO AVALON Moon low, I got out of the car and walked towards the shore. A torch in one hand. A white lace veil in the other. I waded in until the water took my knees. Cold at first. Then not. The beam cut white ribbons through the dark, the veil catching light like something not quite of this world. The ocean held me the way Finn once did. Steady. Wordless. Certain. When the torch died, the dark rushed in. I lifted the veil to the moon and waited. But nothing came back.

He pulled me onto the couch beside him, heavy-lidded, unhurried, and held me there while he told me it needed to be goodbye. His voice was soft. "You're just like everyone else to me now." I should have believed him. I should have stood up, walked out, let the Uber take me somewhere I could breathe. Instead I stayed. Ignored the rats scuttling round his kitchen in the dark. I apologised. I tried to prove that I was different, lovable, worthy. That what we had was special, t

When I drew, I tried to make nice pictures, tried to focus on the good, but my brush strokes stubbornly refuse to lie, and painted things as they truly were. A haunted house burning to the ground. The real fire was inside - slow, steady, eating me from the edges while I kept the facade gleaming for everyone else.

Spray-painted on the wall inside. A heart with an arrow. Childish. Permanent. His last mark on the world we'd tried to build together. I stood there for a long time, the smell of paint sharp in my lungs. Even his goodbyes look like graffiti.

He was never a gypsy. That was the disguise I wrapped him in so I didn’t have to call him what he was. He appeared when it suited him. Disappeared when it didn’t. Never stayed long enough to be known. Never left long enough to let me be free. Just enough to keep my heart from healing back inside my chest. I told myself he was a free spirit, that he lived lightly. That his absence meant he was deep, mysterious, that it was part of his intelligence. But really, it was just avoi

I wake before the house, pad barefoot to my favourite seat on the front porch, and allow myself to be still. Pencil in my hands. An imaginary smudge of ash I never wash away on my fingertips. The ocean is a few streets over, close enough to hear on windy days. I go there often. I walk in until my ankle burns and the water says enough for today. In front of me: Sky. Possibilities as broad as the horizon. I inhale. It smells like salt, and smoke, and something new.

If you’re looking for a neat moral, I don’t have one. I have a house that remembers, a body that forgets on purpose, and a stack of drawings that tell the truth better than I ever could. Fire and water taught me their lessons. Dion, the flaming eye I drew in petrol and ash; the haunted-house kiss while the walls burned; the graffiti heart he sprayed on my shed and called devotion; the Ducati and the single lily left in my driveway like a dare. Finn, boat lights drifting

I don’t trust the title of this book anymore. For a long time, The Fire and The Water felt right. It gave shape to things that were overwhelming. It made intensity feel meaningful. Now I’m not so sure. I’m starting to wonder if fire and water were never the problem. If naming them that way was just a way to avoid looking at something deeper and harder to admit. I wasn’t drowned. I wasn’t forged. I wasn’t even changed in the dramatic way I once believed. I was hiding. Not all