"Give me conch shell hearts,
and seaside larks"

Love Me

"up close people look less like mirror
and more like the sand it is made from"

sand mirror 

"I'm sorry I gave you the impression 
that planets revolve..."

Solar Systems

"She cast every second kernel aside, the pomegranate seeds spilling juice with a gentle squeeze. If you squinted right, they were made of violence."

Psychro's Cave

"We are mostly empty space, they say. That when my hand holds yours, it is the void.

...They don’t understand that when I splay my viscera across the mirror (because she is more beautiful that way), of course your body bleeds as well."

I don't believe in atoms (I want to touch something)

"...Surely, blood soaked poppies,
wilted in the Great War's rain
are only beautiful by a poet's lies?"

Poppies, in Bleeding Hope

"How these hollow walls echo.
Those voices are bloody, I swear,
with red hands or fatal wounds.
And my love flies away through an open window."

The Wolves of Rusted Promise

"And, always, there is the fog that remains over my senses, another way of pain. It makes the merest exertion exhausting and gives everything the appearance of black grief – like no happiness will be known to man again. I feel it is for forever."

The Starry Night Has Bars Across It

"I will not die
to stop this beating heart beating me –
amorphous, threefold-like creature,
with textbook blue veins –

I will bleed"

Beating Art

"...think of hallowed ground swallowed
by rubble and fire,
and dust. Like salt to the sea from the tears
of a nation
of souls."

Cities in War

The Starry Night Has Bars Across It 

"I think how every bullet that meets its mark rips through a beating heart, wrenches apart a living, breathing being who felt anger and pain and passion – our weapons kill, and make killers of, human men."

Over the Top

"There was once a time when the snow, now a deep, angelic white, was a dark, angry red. The red of blood, of pain, of passion. Of hearts and their wounds, when the world knew what such things were."

A Legend of Cold and Fire

"She was beneath a sky upon which danced fractals of rose gold. The clouds had turned beautifully, painfully bright in the early morning light – a sky that was alive with colour."

The Broken Wages of Memories False

"I think how every bullet that meets its mark rips through a beating heart, wrenches apart a living, breathing being who felt anger, pain, and passion. Our weapons kill and make killers of human men."

Wars of These No Man's Lands 

"The flames curled around the papery, inky tales of time, turning them to dead ash. The smoky smell of thousands of burned pages and tonnes of melted leather wafted through the air in a hazy vapour that shot up to hide the stars." 

Maryam Majid

Selected work