Fractured memory
The story begins where the record ends: in silence, in absence, in things not said. It gathers fragments across generations – a father’s disappearance, a mother’s betrayal, a child’s confusion, the ghost of a brother never fully buried – and traces the shape they leave in a life.
There is no neat catharsis here. No villain too easy to hate. Only patterns, repetitions, and the quiet devastation of realising what you carried was never truly yours.
Some readers may find solace in a version of themselves reflected here. Others may feel discomfort.
Both are diagnostic.
If you find yourself reacting – defensively, dismissively, or with unexpected emotion – that reaction belongs to you. This text does not assign blame. It simply holds up a mirror.
And sometimes what unsettles us most is not a lie,
but an accurate reflection.
It was not a crash
A crash implied violence, panic, an ending. This was an arrival, an unscheduled landing, an argument with physics that had concluded in a draw. The aircraft had stopped in a field with its dignity compromised, yes, but the pilot had walked away with his. He could live with that. From…
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Sacrificial territory
The true double bind is not merely a clash of obligations. It is a collision between incompatible moral worlds, each claiming total legitimacy. What makes it intolerable is not that you cannot satisfy all parties, but that whichever path you take will retroactively redefine you as immoral in someone else’s…
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Office doors
There is a particular species of man one encounters in failing organisations. Not the usurper. Not the saboteur. Not the visionary who sees flames as an opportunity for rebirth. No. This man is humbler, softer, and altogether more revealing. He is the one found in doorways. Neither fully in the…
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Ghost Mother (iv)
I remember the birth because it was winter. I remember the smell of disinfectant, and Peter’s hands, warm and steady, holding mine. I remember feeling nothing and thinking that must be what peace was. They said she was small, fragile. He called her perfect. I told myself I’d given him…
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On Villains and Heroes
The story written is not the only story that could be told. The same circumstances – the same childhood, the same betrayal, the same courtroom silence – can be narrated as the making of a monster or the tempering of a saint. Events are fixed; meaning is not. This is…
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Reade Saunders 