Category: Dead Men Don’t Drown
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20.10: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #11 (catch-up with all episodes here) Dear Ms Macleod, thank you for the photographs, which show what appears to be a folded letter secured by a spiral lock, though I agree the name is unhelpful, since the finished packet looks less like a spiral than a paper tongue stitched through its…
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19.10: The Liturgy
#11 Liturgy for the Advice You Did Not Want(for the wisdom that arrives disguised as a suggestion) I. The Voice That Speaks Softly The advice came quietly,as a suggestion,offered with the lightnessof someone who knowsyou will not listen at first. It was wise,it settles like a stonein quiet water. But you did not want it,because…
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13.10: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #10 (catch-up with all episodes here) The next morning I sit at the kitchen table eating strawberries and cream for breakfast while the neighbour’s cat stares through the screen door with the patient outrage of a creature expecting staff. It knows this house better than I do, hooks one claw beneath…
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12.10: The Liturgy
#10 Liturgy for the Memory That Lingers(for the tricks the past plays on the heart) I. The Scent That Refuses to LeaveYou open a closet door,and though the clothes are gone,given away to someone else’s life,the scent of the one who wore themstill hangs in the air like a held breath. Strawberries and cold cream.Tobacco…
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06.10: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #9 (catch-up with all episodes here) Episode 9 Dead Men Don’t Drown Clive receives me in the basement office beneath his terraced house, one hand resting on the walking stick beside his chair and the other holding a book against his chest as though it has weight enough to steady him.…
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05.10: The Liturgy
Episode 9 Liturgy for the Lawyer’s Quiet(for the facts that sit in silence) I. The Office That Holds Its BreathFenella steps into the lawyer’s office,a room that smells of old paper,dust settled into the bindingsof books no one has openedin decades. The man himself is elderly,his hands marked with the slow workof documents,his eyes the…
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29.09: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #8 (catch-up with all episodes here) Episode number 08: Dead Men Don’t Drown That night I sleep badly, pitching from one side of the bed to the other as though the cottage has come loose from its foundations and we’d gone to sea. At dawn I give up, pad barefoot downstairs,…
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28.09: The Liturgy
Liturgy for the Answers That Yield More Questions(for the pacing, the waking, the silent photographs) I. The Floor That Knows Your FootstepsYou have worn a path in the carpet.Back and forth,as if the fibres might rearrange themselvesinto a confessionif you walk them long enough. But they do not. The carpet only holds the shape of…
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2209: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #7 (catch-up with all episodes here) Dead Men Don’t Drown When I tell the volunteer that Jacob Macleod was my grandfather, her face changes by the smallest degree, not surprise exactly, but the expression of a woman who has just heard a floorboard answer back. She does not ask whether I…
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2209: The Liturgy
Liturgy number 07 Dead Men Don’t Drown “Liturgy for the Sea That Refused”(for the man who became paper, and the wave that said no) I. The Reduction of a Man to PaperThey gave you a file.Not a body.Not a burial.Not the salt-scoured bonesthe sea should have surrenderedafter the proper amount of grieving. They gave you…
