By Estelle Phillips My son returned late.   We silenced at the sight of him wrought with devastation from a fight not quite to the death.   I rushed to hug him, lured him into his old room where he flung his rucksack across the bed and perched, smouldering with contempt. His mask for loneliness.   His breathing slowed and turned to fire. He burnt words exposing our secret shames, brought us to his place of breaking.   My son was like a dragon come to claim our souls.   Prepar

By Yati Ramli The house inhales at night. Its walls ripple with unseen lungs, doors sigh on their hinges, and the staircase beats like a slow heart. I wander room to room, listening for your footsteps. They are not here - only the hush of curtains, the small rustle of spiders in corners. Yet there is beauty in this haunting. The dark does not lie; it tells me everything remains, only changed - your laughter woven into floorboards, your shadow pressed into glass. The house exh

By Heath Sutherland Walls closed midnight velvet. Doctors seared brands into my skin - depression, anxiety, psychosis —   The true word “autism” slept coiled in my marrow, a black rose waiting for its century to bloom.   I was the boy who “saw” music and cried too soon: Jeff Wayne’s synths exploding violet galaxies, Meatloaf’s bleeding crimson thunder, each note a living shape only my skull could cradle. Beauty inside the looping torment that later tried to drown me.   I lear