Invisible Leavings

The smell of the Arm's salt wafts stubbornly on the breeze, through the medley of scents emanating from the food stalls lining the waterfront. Of all those aromas, she craves the salt the most; it's a tantalizing reminder of Alexandria's Mediterranean. Even despite the Arm's stately calm being sharply at odds with the raging waves she knew were crashing relentlessly on the coast of Egypt's northern city. She envisioned the shape of the water beneath that calm surface, and wo ndered if it possibly belied a swift current. A passion for human companionship, a desire to talk perhaps. A desire to entrap, ensnare and seduce. A cold, casual slap after you've trusted the warmth of that salt on the air. The horizon held a weak morning light. In her Book, sleep was described as a "small death". Despite that darker name, that was an embrace she knew was kind, and her dreams rather more lit than most mornings. Dreams can be beautiful, when they're y

There’s something about contemplating your hands that is profoundly grounding. They’re such a delicate part of your body, when you think how easily they can be injured for instance. Yet they do such monumental tasks every day. The phrase “prepared with loving hands” comes to mind, and the first picture in my head is: meals. But it's not just the pretty pancakes, pastas and salads of our everyday meals that I envision; there’s also the scald of hot water during the first seconds of dishwashing before I’ve balanced the water’s temperature, the scrape of the knife’s edge against my nails if my hands are shaking after a long day at work, or the hiss of a paper cut on my finger tip when I pull out aluminum sheets too fast during the early morning scramble out of the house. I look at my cuticles now, my knuckles, my shapeless nails, the remnants of bruises and cuts and burns all over the skin of my hands. This is skin that has seen better days, and will continue to see more hards