She thought that love was hidden in a shot glass, the shattered squares of disco balls or 3am cab rides. Purple and explosive, always that belly-churning, gut-wrenching need.
Turns out love is stepping out of parties, into the November air that kisses your bare skin, reminding you how to breathe.
Rachel Canwell wrote this story.
Dear Love
It’s been a week. Seven days.
I miss your quiet breath, your constant steady being.
The cat misses you too.
I still lay two plates.
We haven’t dusted.
Because what if those feathery motes that dance in the sunlight are the final pieces of you?
Love Me x
Rachel Canwell is a writer and teacher living in Cumbria. Her debut flash collection ‘Oh I do like to be’ was published by Alien Buddha in July 2022. Her short fiction has been published in Sledgehammer Lit, Pigeon Review, Reflex Press, Selcouth Station and The Birdseed amongst others. She is currently working on her first novel.
Secrets whispered in the park, she finds, become facts. Light ones, slight ones, but facts all the same.
To be picked up by the wind.
And occasionally the big girls.
Blown like fallen blossom around town.
Settling on pavements, doorsteps.
And before long you’ll find the priest knows your name.
Rachel Canwell is a writer and teacher living in Cumbria. She is currently working on a flash collection and her first novel which was shortlisted for the Retreat West Pitch to Win 2021. Her short fiction has been published in Sledgehammer Lit, Pigeon Review, Reflex Press, Selcouth Station and The Birdseed amongst others. See more at bookbound.blog/writing.
Come with me and I will show you a name on a brick. A brick, fading red, in a crumbling wall. Three rows up, twelve bricks along.
Written there long ago in the smallest, neatest hand. Before the sun set and the clock chimed. And the girl’s name changed.
Forever.
Rachel Canwell wrote this story.
Walking through empty rooms, one last time. Closing each door, I allow my mind to linger over this year’s occupants. Their baggage, their histories, souvenirs left behind.
Scratched skirtings, cupboards that stick, perpetually noisy pipes and reluctant lights.
And that stain in the carpet
that the guests believe is wine.
Rachel Canwell wrote this story.
They haven’t been here for a long time. And yet nothing has really changed.
The chairs are still hard and uncomfortable; the tea is still lukewarm and surprisingly bitter.
But the magic…
The magic is still there.
And hand in hand, eye to eye, they lose twenty years just gazing.
Rachel Canwell is a teacher, writer and blogger. She is working on her WIP and falling rapidly in love with Flash Fiction.
Corridors and coffee cups. Tattered posters and dusty hopes.
Sitting, waiting for news of you. Staring at the ceiling. Careful not to let the medics see the panic behind my eyes. Desperate to control my fear.
Waiting for the results of every test. Praying they have forgotten the tox screen.
Rachel Canwell is a teacher and book blogger, writing in secret for years but starting to put her head about the parapet!
Wrapped in an unbreakable silence, she stares down at the silent, perfect child in her arms. Her face is drawn, wet with endless tears.
Fingers tracing his eyelids, translucent, indefatigably closed, pause, as with a sudden, unbearable clarity she realises the colour of his eyes will be for ever unknown.
Rachel Canwell is a teacher and book blogger, writing in secret for years but starting to put her head about the parapet!