Read Issue Thirteen online here.
Get the PDF version here.

Maybe we could be
like a metal fence
consumed by the trunk of a tree
after years of coexisting in place

You could quit your job,
and we could build
a raspberry trellis
or a shelf that hangs above the toilet
or a secret language

Our weekend agenda could include
counting the hairs on your toes
or holding eye contact for ten minutes;
no talking

I was thinking,
you know how to use a post driver,
and I know which spot gets the most sun

Elinor Maycan is a graduate student and writer located in the Pacific Northwest. Her work appears in orangepeel literary magazine and Candlelight Magazine.

Somehow I had convinced myself it would not happen again. Life had returned to normal, and my porcelain plates remained porcelain. My toothpaste frothed and was spat into the sink every morning and evening. During my lunch break, I bought sourdough sandwiches from the bakery and bit down into the sharp crust with no fear. Straws didn’t intimidate me. The suction of my lips spread soft drinks and milk tea onto my tongue with ease. The life I lived was mundane, my shirts clean and my teeth pearly white.

At first, nothing felt different. It was all the same, but with you here. We walked along Victoria Harbour late at night and the only thing coating my lips was lipstick. Until saliva built up behind my teeth, and I gulped it down. Until your smile was an invitation for my body to swell in the wrong places. My shirt was too tight and I stifled a yawn, shielding my open mouth from the sidelong gaze of the woman draped in film, wishing my own lips could be cast in bronze and sealed forever.

When you stepped close, I didn’t stop you. My open mouth met yours under the pale moonlight. Tomorrow, the porcelain will be spotted red.

Aaliyah André is a student of Creative Writing and Classics working somewhere between the sargasso sea, the wild Atlantic way and the fragrant harbour. She is interested in people, plants and the porosity of clay. Her work can be found in University of Galway’s Literatum, Black Tones’ Blue Bodies and ROPES Literary Journal.

The old lady hasn’t been outside in four months. Five, perhaps. She lost count around the time her neighbours fled. Quick, clumsy footsteps down the stairs in the deadest part of the night. She likes to imagine that they got away.

Her stomach gurgles. She hasn’t eaten for weeks, apart from the damp biscuits that she rations to four a day. Lying in bed, tracing the lines on the ceiling, she stifles a yawn. Her mind is sharp, but her body is so very tired.

Today will be the day. She’s not sure whether she has known this all along, or if she’s just made the decision. Either way, she moves carefully from her cool, damp bed to her dressing table, which wobbles as she leans on it to sit down. She applies lipstick. A light-grey sheen is beginning to soak through the thin blinds. That’s as bright as it’s going to get; the sun was another thing that disappeared.

She can feel the roughness of her lips beneath the sticky scarlet paste. She can see her hollowed eyes in the blotchy mirror. From the world beyond the window she hears nothing but a steady silence. She moves on to powdering her cheeks. Dusty specks hang in the fetid air, and the woman counts seconds, then minutes in the deep quiet. Perhaps it’s all over already.

It will be soon, anyway. For her. She gathers her hair in one hand, wondering how it can feel both limp and brittle. In the dresser drawer she finds a clasp, with golden fingers and a ruby red top. It sparkles in the grey-light, a beacon from another time, long-lost treasure just unearthed. It takes her several attempts before she’s happy with the reflection in the mirror.

The air from the wardrobe is thick and musty. Her hands feel for a dress hanging at the end of the rail. Powder blue printed with roses. She wonders if it will still fit, then smiles ruefully when it hangs limp from her shoulders. The effort of raising her hands above her head has left her out of breath.

A jacket hanging at the other end of the rail, thick and bristly, is almost too much for her to lift out. Once she held her daughter against its fur collar, while the girl wrinkled her nose and giggled. Those eyes, perfectly round pools of wonder. Unblinking, gazing up.

Dead now, of course. She focuses on what needs to be done here, now, this morning. She reaches for a velvet hat hanging behind the door, brushes the dust from its dome, and makes her way out into the dimly lit hallway. A ball of string lies in a corner, pillowed in dust. She tries to remember the cat’s name, but it’s long since faded from her mind, disappeared into the shadows like the cat itself. Like she will soon.

Her knees crack and her fingers tremble on the banister. She feels light, as if she could let go and float to the door. She realises that it’s the guilt that’s left her. She wonders why she used to care, what she used to be so terrified of. The time for her act of defiance has arrived, finally, when she will walk out into the street beyond in her Sunday best, never to return.

The air is as sharp as a knife. The silence is even louder out here, buzzing and groaning, but over it all the click of a pistol being cocked reaches her ears. Loud and clear.

Stewart McKay has lived in Hong Kong since 2012. An active member of the Hong Kong Writers Circle, he has contributed to several of their anthologies, editing two of them: HK24 (2017) and Lost in Transition (2023). His flash fiction and short stories have appeared, and have been shortlisted for prizes, in publications such as Grindstone Literary, Raconteur, and Fiction Factory. His debut novel, The Ballad of Billy Lopez, was published in 2024.

I come to preach, son of a line long dead,
Still seeing in mankind old follies rise;
We too let brief success go to our head,
Exulted appetite, and called it wise.

We made our force the gospel and the law,
Our roaring urge the bludgeon and the creed;
The petty globe held captive in our jaw,
Blind to the hungers only time can feed.

Her span has crushed our haughty bones to crude,
That liquid gold your industries consume,
Perspectives from short lives were ever skewed;
You too will rest in her entropic tomb.

So, heed your future; reflect in due course who’ll
Dig up your bones to use for mere fuel

Henrik Hoeg is a Danish poet living in Hong Kong. He is the organizer and main MC of Peel Street Poetry, an open mic that has now been running for over 20 years. He has published three books, with his latest being Birth is the Coward's Way In, a collection of poems and short stories.

A week ago, Arthur Barclay won the election — a first for the Revolutionary Party.

Today, he summoned us to the Assembly Hall.

I assumed it was the official party summons following his victory. About time, I thought.

When I arrived, the hall was already full. Rows of dark coats pressed shoulder to shoulder, the air thick with polished leather. Men I had spent two years campaigning beside sat rigid, speaking in low, careful voices that never quite rose above a murmur.

The seating was arranged by seniority. I was guided to a modest seat in the middle row, beside a man whose position I never quite understood.

Arthur Barclay entered with armed guards, rifles resting easily in their hands. Conversation died, and the crowd erupted in cheers. Then, Arthur raised his hand, and the hall stilled. He adjusted the microphone and shuffled his papers.

Finally, he spoke.

“Today, I have brought you all here to address something that can no longer be ignored.”

His eyes were cold.

“A group of high-ranking officials has conspired to remove me from power.”

The room froze.

“The guilty parties,” he continued, “are already in this room.”

My skin turned cold. Sweat gathered at my temples.

The man beside me shifted in his seat. Only then did I notice guards stationed at the end of the hall, closing the doors. Locking them.

Footsteps echoed as a heavyset man climbed the stage. I recognized him immediately, Laurence. He had openly disagreed with Arthur during an assembly a month earlier. He stood behind the microphone, unfolded a paper, and began to speak.

He confessed.

He spoke of treason, of conspiring to overthrow Arthur Barclay and the new regime. Arthur took a seat at the edge of the stage, lit a cigar, and watched.

None of it made sense. Laurence had never opposed the revolution.

I wasn’t sure anyone truly had.

But I had.

My head throbbed. I could barely hear the words anymore. That was when I noticed Laurence’s hands. They were shaking. His collar was ruffled, and beneath it, a faint trace of crimson peeked through.

After Laurence finished, the guards seized him and escorted him out through the doors they had locked moments earlier. He did not glance at anyone as he passed.

Arthur stood up once again, unhurried, re-lighting his cigar.

“What should be done with traitors?” he asked. “In this country, there is only one answer. An eye for an eye.”

Terrified applause filled the room. I clapped too. What else could I have done?

“When I read your name,” Arthur said calmly, “stand and leave.”

My legs went numb.

The names kept getting called. The air tightened.

“Me? I didn’t do anything!” the man next to me shouted, rising abruptly. I flinched at the sudden movement, “I swear — on everything I own —”

Arthur doesn’t even look at him. “When your name is announced, stand up and head through the door,” he repeated in a cold voice.

One by one, they were led away. No one was told where they were going.

I noticed names crossed out on Arthur’s list.

I did not want to know what it meant.

Then silence settled in.

“That is all,” Arthur said. “Thank you for your loyalty.”

My name hadn’t been read out.

The room erupted. Men stood cheering, clapping, crying. I stood too, my legs buckling beneath me, my hands clapping violently as tears streamed down my face.

That was when Arthur looked directly at me. He held my gaze and smiled.

Maryam is an engineering student who’s had the privilege of growing up surrounded by stories in every form - novels, films, theatre and television alike. Of them all, writing stood out as the most beautiful, perhaps because of how accessible it was: a way to create entire worlds from nothing but words.

The theme for this issue was inspired by the editor’s chance observation of a rather passive-aggressive piece of graffiti spray-painted on the gate of a shop front: the word YAWN in a lazy font, repeated on each panel. This editor's first thought was to take it as a critical response.

But what a diversity of inspiration it has generated!

From “The Purge” by Maryam Kaleem we learn to feel fear in the subtleties of a glance. Henrik Hoeg, in “Mesozoic Warning” brings a humorous – or is it? – take on the span of eons in sonnet form. Meanwhile, our returning author Stewart McKay has produced, in “The Day After”, a poignant evocation of what it feels like to simply be dead tired of life.

We are also delighted to have a piece of flash fiction in this issue, one of the first to actually be titled with our quarterly prompt, “The Yawn”, by Aaliyah André, and to close out the issue with a heart-warming poem by Elinor Maycan, “Family Planning”.

We also have several returning artists this issue, including Kasra Shroff (who was featured in Issue #1!) and some brand new work from first-time contributors.

There's a yawning gap in our world for original art and literature, and we will do our part to fill it.

The five pieces in The Apostrophe Issue 13 will be published on the first five days of the month, starting tomorrow, with the full PDF (including bonus artwork!) published the following day.

What is that one thing? The thing other people find dull or even yawn-worthy, but which unaccountably excites your passion? The one thing whose secrets you know, into whose depths you have plunged, which appears ordinary but which you can make extraordinary?

Or: tell us about the sweetness of rest, the torture of sleeplessness, or the desperation to get through the day without the unthinkable occurring.

If this does not inspire you, consider the delight of a baby’s yawn, or that of a tiny kitten just before it gives up on the rigors of a day spent chasing sunbeams. (We could all use something along those lines just about now.) Perhaps you have an old hound dog whose last yawn touched you in a way you must set down in words.

We love non-fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction just as much as we love fiction and poetry (and hybrid), but we receive very few submissions in this category. Essayists, we’re waiting for you!

As usual, artists, we also want your photographs, drawings, and paintings that relate to this prompt! Or, if you have something you’d like to share that doesn’t have anything to do with this prompt, we’re still eager to see it.

The theme for issue #13 is YAWN. Submissions are open from April 1 to 30, 2026. Issue #13 will be published starting on June 1, 2026. Visit our submissions page for more details.

Read Issue Twelve online here.
Get the PDF version here.

The bus doors hissed shut right as Marcus turned the corner. He stood, taking in the sound – like the city exhaling disgust at him specifically.

His briefcase swung against his knee. The leather handle was already sticky with sweat even though fog was choking the street like wet gauze. The 38 Geary pulled away, its taillights two red eyes winking at his failure.

“Wait!”

His voice disappeared.

Marcus stood there. 8:47. Daniel from accounting would purse his lips into that small anus of disapproval he saved for people who couldn’t even catch a bus on time. Twelve minutes until the next one, standing here like an idiot in shoes that cost three hundred dollars and still squeaked when he walked.

Fuck it.

He started jogging. The briefcase banged his thigh. His girlfriend had bought him these shoes, saying they’d help. As if Italian leather could make white people see past his skin. The bus sat fat and smug at the next light.

Marcus ran.

Something weird happened. His breathing evened out and the briefcase stopped mattering. He was actually gaining on it. The bus lurched forward and so did Marcus, tie flying back like he was someone important, someone with somewhere to be. Someone who mattered.

He caught up to it at Fillmore.

Inside, the usual suspects slumped against windows: Purple Scarf Lady, Giants Cap Grandpa. All of them marinating in their own quiet desperation, scrolling past other people’s fake lives while their real one leaked away minute by minute. The bus was an aquarium. They were the fish.

Marcus laughed – an ugly bark that came from his stomach.

He looked at that bus and something snapped clean. The light changed green and the bus wheezed forward, but Marcus was already past thinking about catching it.

“Come on, you piece of shit!”

He careened down the sidewalk, dodging poles and benches. A mother yanked her stroller away from him at the last minute as he strode by at full speed. Yeah, lady. Black guy running and yelling. Call someone.

The bus fell back like it was standing still.

Marcus’s legs pumped harder. The neighborhood morphed around him. Victorian houses that used to pulse with life – musicians in the basement, somebody’s tía cooking on the stoop, kids doing homework on the porch – now they were hollow, Airbnbs and investment properties. Empty most of the year. Fresh battleship-gray paint over what used to be electric blue, canary yellow, deep purple. The owners probably lived in Atherton. Probably had never met their neighbors.

His corner store was gone. In its place was a shop selling candles that cost more than his monthly PG&E bill, waxy columns named “Meditation” and “Renewal.” As if the scent of burning eucalyptus could fill the hole where your soul used to be.

The mural on the laundromat – this gorgeous thing, all these Black and brown faces looking hopeful – painted over. Just flat beige now. The landlord probably thought it hurt property values.

He tore past the construction site, another glass phallus climbing toward heaven. The jackhammers sounded like the city screaming. The billboard promised luxury. This used to be Mrs. Chen’s garden. She grew actual food here. She fed people. Taught kids that tomatoes came from dirt, not Whole Foods. Before long, a developer decided the land was worth more empty.

Marcus’s lungs burned but the burn felt clean, like cauterizing a wound.

Downtown swallowed him. The financial district pressed in – all those buildings designed to look important, to make you feel small. Each one blocking more sky, like they wanted to own even the light. Marcus recalled coming here with his father. He was maybe eight. They got ice cream at the Ferry Building, watched ships and the men working near the water’s edge. Men who did real things with their hands. Before the algorithms made his father redundant.

His dad drank himself dead by 56.

Marcus ran faster.

The morning rush thickened. All these people in their costumes, clutching phones like they were afraid someone might ask them to look up, to actually see. Streaming into buildings where they’d spend the day moving money around, creating nothing, producing nothing, just shuffling numbers in a shell game where the house always wins. He dodged through them. His jacket flapped open. His briefcase swung wild. Some guy in a blue suit yelled “Watch it!” but Marcus was already gone.

There – his building. Fifty hours a week minimum. Analyzing market trends for people who already had more money than their great-grandchildren could spend. Writing reports no one read. Sitting in meetings about meetings. His life was measured in Excel cells and Outlook invites and the slow erosion of whatever he used to believe about himself.

The fountain in the plaza shot water in computer-programmed arcs. Even the water had to perform here. Had to fall exactly where it was told.

Marcus’s heart crashed against his ribs, over and over. His shirt clung to him, a wet membrane. His feet throbbed, hot and raw inside his expensive shoes. Other employees filtered through the revolving doors – those doors that keep spinning whether you go in or not, whether you exist or not. Security guards with their metal detectors and their dead eyes, and everyone sleepwalking through security theater toward their climate-controlled coffins.

He should stop, breathe, become presentable. Should walk through those doors and apologize and pretend today was like every other day, would be followed by another day exactly the same, a string of identical days leading to a retirement party where people would say nice things they didn’t mean before forgetting his name by Monday.

His legs kept pumping.

The fountain got close. He could smell the chlorine trying to mask the mineral rot underneath. His briefcase felt like it was full of stones. Like he was carrying his own death around. Like a casket, with his dissolved dreams inside he’d toted blindly for years.

Twenty feet. Ten.

The security guard looked up. Started to smile. He started to lift his hand in a wave, this small acknowledgment that Marcus was a person he recognized, a regular, someone who belonged here.

Marcus cut hard left.

He launched himself over the fountain’s wall. Hung suspended in the air for one impossible second – between the him that clocked in and the him that could still choose. The water waited below, moving the only way it remembered how before someone told it to stop.

He crashed through the surface.

The cold was a slap. Perfect. It filled his nose, his ears, his mouth. It soaked through everything – his suit, his shirt, his skin. His briefcase hit the bottom with a sound like a body falling. Above, muffled shouting. People gathering to watch the show. He stayed under, letting the water hold him. Letting it wash off whatever he’d been pretending to be.

When he surfaced, he was laughing and choking, and maybe crying. He couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. He stood there in knee-deep fountain water, clothes plastered to him, and looked at the crowd. Karen from HR. His boss Tom. The security guard speaking urgently into his radio like Marcus was a bomb threat.

He reached down and grabbed his briefcase. Lifted it overhead like a trophy. Water geysered from every seam.

“I QUIT!” he screamed at all of them, at the buildings, at the manicured trees in their concrete prisons, at the whole neutered gutted sold-off corpse of the city. “I FUCKING QUIT!”

And standing there in the fountain – water everywhere, everyone staring, sirens probably coming – Marcus felt his pulse for the first time in years. He felt the ghost of the city that used to exist under all this glass and greed. His father’s hand in his. Mrs. Chen’s garden in full bloom. Every mural, every mom-and-pop shop, every person and place erased to make room for more money. But also, this: his own lungs taking in air. His own feet on the ground. His own life, whatever was left of it, finally his again.

Water streamed off him onto the concrete, finding its own way back. The way water does when you stop telling it what to be.

R.E. Harris is a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently living in metro Atlanta. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, among other international publications. He is a past recipient of the George Polk Award, the Scripps Howard Award and the Grantham Prize for investigative journalism. He surrounds himself with pens, puzzles and inquiry.

       1. (home)

there is time left, i guess

i.

there is just too much politics growing 
as the family eats, the elder daughter
and the detoned father,

shard right-wingness against the girl
who kisses the blood ground and waves
		                 red flags at streetlights

baba will never know

gloomy humid summer, hair in spitballs,

maa                 cooks
                                 cooks
                                         cooks

maa doesn’t understand living beyond dinner tables,
What does maa even understand about living?
there is too much light and prayer staining the food,
father and I don’t see her,

steered, severed, crying mother, wake up, do something for yourself

ii. 

every face is a repetition,
kiss me with that face, kiss me
hidden behind the bush like you taint me,
taint me more than I am.
Kiss me like I hate you,
kiss me like you have never known softness
kiss me and I won’t recognise my body,
carry it around my neck for the rest of my life.
Dig your teeth in, mark landmines on my lips
as long as it is painful, it will be pleasurable.
Kiss me, I will become what you make of me.

maa I am not you, I will never be you
I know desire, I escaped, nothing can stop me
not even you
not even the city, will escape it too




iii. 

every time I take the metro, the city emerges behind me,
gulfed in endings, the people in stranded horizons
derive pleasure from the city fermented to their skin,
lick them,
Lick time, lick the rain
that falls impatiently upon these yellow streets
in death and doubts.
It’s January’s city now, 
Like the dog-bitten dustbin, everyone here is dispensable.


In a certain corner of the street, the cigarette stench has dried overnight, and a small boy grows roses to sell them to strangers
Every now and then I feel this indescribable urge to cry




2. (outside)r

I.

I grow up.

swiftly defy lungs, smoke propels, dog teeth in a strange foreign land
trees shimmering behind the window
the air smells like
                                       cure.

Even for a little while, there are too many stars here at night,
too many lips to touch, hoe eras and corona bottles under the bed,
darkness by 4, but glimpses of light
up my body, up my body
be lost, thoughts hang from the Big Ben, 
and if the electric buses run a little faster
the past may not even keep up.

Is this emancipation?
existing is magnetic 

maa do you see me gliding like the sky’s my own fucking lounge
I never want to go home

II. 
Every night you ask me for tea
I watch the kettle whistles.
As your delicate hands pour the red juice
Over two similar plastic cups, 

we talk and talk and talk and talk
and talk and talk and talk 

The formless night intrudes through the window
Like the tea, it tastes tender.

Maa I feel protected after a long time.

III.

maa i am 22 now, i am continents away, maa where is the potential you talked about, i am curled up in a lightless room, in a glamorous white country, trying to write something, nothing’s working out, where is the fucking potential? 

I was lying 
I was lying
I was lying

there is nothing here
sounds of the city stolen blue
parcel me a guidebook, will you?

maa i am not you
maa i want to be you, at least you are full.
maa is there any time left anymore
to be you?

Can you cook something for me?




3. (return)

One morning suddenly you walk up to the front door and light spills yellow all over the place
You remember
That you are back home,
Maa, Baba, they are still where you left them

As the city recoils ahead of you, you realise

That there are fallen leaves everywhere you go
There is no country like home, no war like living. 

Sayantika Sarkar is an Indian poet, fiction writer, and essayist with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Surrey. Her work explores womanhood, cities, migration, intimacy, and quiet forms of resistance, examining power, displacement, and the emotional afterlives of borders. Her writing has appeared in Poems (India) and The Insurgence.

Joãowow Lucas is always looking for more wow! As a writer, artist, and immigrant in Lisbon, Joãowow captures photos as inspiration for poetry. Typed on half-sheets of old paper on an old typewriter, these short poems explore themes of belonging and alienation, home and the road, adversity and acceptance.

The Grotto’s serenity belied the rumours that swirled like noxious clouds, casting shadows on its role as a tranquil resting place for the school’s long-gone members. It hid its mystery like a secretive animal. Sana’s hand draped over a rock as if pulling a friend closer, about to mutter confidences. Sunlight filtered through the morning mist, watery and tepid. Water splashed down the fountain at the entry, collecting in a muddy pond in which a school of vermillion and white fish swam ceaselessly in contained circles, oblivious of the lakes, rivers, and seas brimming with life much like the inhabitants of the boarding school. The smooth, alabaster statue of Mary stared stonily ahead, presiding over the scene, pretending to an equanimity it did not feel. The trees surrounding the graves shivered and stood reticent, like witnesses holding back testimony.

Seven days earlier, when Sana first saw Amaya on the other side of the doorway, she hoped they would be friends. Sana stood at the entrance to the dining hall, diffident and unsure, like a sparrow who had fluttered in, lost amid the tables and chairs, searching for a way out.

There was a briskness to the morning. The nuns instructed, the girls spooned in their breakfast, all unquestioning in the roles assigned to them. Sana spotted a milk jug, surrounded by colourful plastic cups, emanating a strong, stale odour. She hesitated, then squaring her shoulders, poured the milk and brought it to her lips. The smell overpowered her. Grimacing, she left the dining room, her stomach in a churn.

“You should add Bournvita or Ovaltine, you know. It tastes a lot better,” said Amaya, hurrying after her. “I’m Amaya.”

“I’m Sana. I didn’t think of it. Packing was such a rush.”

“You can have mine.” Sana smiled at the unexpected kindness, her warm brown eyes pools of gratitude.

“Where are you from?” her new friend asked.

“The hills. I’m not used to the heat.”

The girls chattered and wandered around the grounds until the sombre chime of the clock announced their first lesson. They ran through deserted mango and tamarind groves, late for school. Breathless, they stumbled into the classroom. Mrs D’Souza looked up from the blackboard at the audacious interruption, her chalk poised mid-scrawl. “Come in,” she said, her voice tight with displeasure as she glanced at her watch, its leather strap fraying at the edges. A sea of friendless faces greeted them. They parted to take their seats.

“Who’s the new girl?” Jessie jabbed her neighbours in front. The girls shrugged politely, taking care not to offend her. Tall and burly, captain of the basketball team, Jessie was unassailable in her popularity.

“Get her to the meeting tonight.” The girls smiled in acquiescence. There was no point resisting.

The classroom was hot and still except for the tired sweep of the fan. Sana looked out of the window. It was yellow and dusty, a far cry from the dense green, damp home she had left behind in the hills. She remembered the house, looking at it one last time from the backseat of the car, ejected from it like a useless piece of scrap. It sat brooding atop a hill at the end of a cul-de-sac, its windows shuttered, the elevation affording it privacy. Its walls were always thick with moisture. The dank smell stayed with her. The heat of the plains dried up the damp in her clothes and her shoes, but there were dark corners within her it failed to reach. The screeching chalk across the blackboard brought her back to the classroom. The girls shifted and squirmed on hard, wooden seats as Mrs D’Souza droned on about the rivers and seas of the world. The lesson felt endless; a barrage of information rained on restless forms waiting for the freedom that came with the clang of the bell.

Amaya led her to the shaded path, lined with tall eucalyptus, the longer route to the dormitory that passed outside a grotto. “It’s cooler here.”

Sana followed, hugging herself closer, noticing the rocky exterior of the grotto dotted with shrubs. She felt as if she was back in the house, being watched. Each time she had entered it – despite its high ceilings and sprawling expanse – she felt she had stepped into a mousetrap. In the two years she lived there, Sana never rid herself of a deep unease, of being haunted by shadows.

Her family had never entirely claimed the space. Sana’s breath quickened as she thought of her little brother dying, her father leaving, her mother wasting away until relatives decided to put her in an institution. The house was locked up, surrendered to its shadowy inhabitants.

“This path looks deserted.”

“The girls don’t like coming this way, after the incident.” Amaya’s face took on a cold, sharp glint. Sana’s heart constricted as if someone had wrapped icy fingers around it. The wind picked up. Dark clouds rolled over the sun. The eucalyptus swayed, its slender leaves whispering secrets to the wind, its slim trunks ghostly white. It was a sea of unhappiness, each step pushing Sana further into a slush of misery. A sliver of clammy coldness touched the back of her neck. Then, all at once, the sun streamed through the clouds and chased the shadows away, as if someone had reluctantly released her back into the world.

“Are you ok?” asked Amaya.

“I’m fine,” she rasped, puzzled at Amaya’s expression of benign concern. “This place is creepy. Let’s hurry.”

As they neared the dormitories, a group of girls walked towards them. “We’re meeting in the hall tonight, after lights out. Why don’t you join us?”

“It’s another dare,” one of the girls muttered.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?” Sana asked.

“Little danger of that happening. Once the matron is asleep, she rarely wakes up.”

Sana and Amaya took the narrow stairs to the dim hall lined with cupboards, leading to the dormitory. Two rows of single beds on either side flanked a dark, polished floor dully reflecting the moving forms of the girls, capturing them in a subterranean world. At the far end was the matron’s room, demarcated by a wooden partition with a door. Beyond that lay a dark corridor leading to the toilets. The girls went there in twos or threes.

Night fell. The girls waited under the covers with the equanimity of monks. Once the matron’s shoes clattered across the floor and the sharp click of her door signalled that she had retired for the night, they trickled out of their beds into the hallway, and arranged themselves in a circle. Jessie stood at the centre and raised a brow as Sana sat down.

‘“I see the new girl came. Well, we all know why we’re here. Let’s hear some ideas.”

“Go to the school building alone at midnight?” someone ventured.

“C’mon! That’s child’s play.”

“Walk to the sports field at the far end of the campus.”

“It’s a plain old walk, lit all the way with lamp posts.”

Jessie shot down suggestions as quickly as they rose. Then, she made one of her own. “We all know about the charming little grotto near the playground.” The girls looked at her in astonishment, but she dug in. “Whoever goes to the grotto at midnight and brings back its sweet water in this bottle will get the first pick of everyone’s tuck.” She held out a small glass flask.

Protests rose: “Too dangerous!”, “We’ll be caught…” and fell like dry leaves on a dying wind.

“Anyone brave enough to do it?” Jessie looked around. Her eyes settled on Sana. The girls shifted nervously on the floor.

Amaya whispered in her ear, “You can do it! It’s just a walk. I’ll come with you halfway.”

Where was the harm? Sana was no stranger to spooky places. And if she did it, she’d be in Jessie’s good books. The tuck would be the cherry on top.

“I’ll do it,” said Sana.

Jessie looked at her as if she had underestimated her. “What do you know? Looks like the new girl has gumption after all!”

The date was set. Days passed in a flurry of alarms, classes, homework, and conversations. As the girls came to speak with Sana, Amaya grew gloomier and resentful.

A week later, the night arrived like any other night. Darkness fell, brooding like a slighted friend, spreading its scowl across the sky, sullenly snuffing out orange, pink, and lavender hues released by the setting sun. It was time for supper. Sana had a big night ahead; she’d better get some food in, however unpalatable. She wondered if her mother was okay; she’d had no news.

The moon came out, bathing the landscape in cool silver, and Sana set forth with Amaya by her side. They soon reached the halfway point; the only obstacles being a rusty gate, which Sana opened so as to not wake the guard, and the hulking dog guarding the premises at night – pacified with the cookies she’d stuffed in her pocket. She turned to wave Amaya goodbye, but found herself alone, the only sound the wind rustling the leaves.

Sana felt a chill creep in, though the night was warm. The clouds rolled in and partially covered the moon. A short walk brought her to the grotto. She entered, feeling as if she had broken into a private home. The familiar sensation of being watched was with her again. She could make out the rocky cave where Mary’s statue stood, and the shapes of the gravestones in the faint light. She walked in deeper. It was easy enough to reach for the tap and collect the sweet liquid, but she was overcome by an unslakeable thirst. She drank in long, greedy gulps, and filled the water bottle. The water was sweet indeed. It ran through her veins, making her feel less of this world. The clouds parted and in the clear moonlight, Sana saw a cluster of smaller graves, a litany of buried dreams. The years indicated shorter lifespans; some of children as young as nine. She ran her wet fingers over the names on the graves and stopped at a familiar one: Amaya Wilson.

A shiver of recognition shot through her like lightning. The shrubs closed in and she couldn’t breathe; her feet were lead, an invisible force pinning them to the ground.

It had been a strange dream. All Sana wanted to do was drift off and get a few more minutes of sleep, but Sister Alice’s strident announcement that there would be no school today intruded. The girls were to proceed to the library, Sister Alice told them, wearing her stern, unsmiling face, and spend their morning constructively, wasting no time on idle gossip. A hush settled over the dormitory, like cold air on a sunless day. Jessie and the girls walked towards her and stood around her. Sana sat up, expecting a spate of congratulations and back thumping for completing the dare. Instead, the girls touched her sheet, her pillow, and mumbled.

It was an unspeakable tragedy. How terrible the whole thing was.

Only Amaya sat beside her smiling, stroking her hair. The smile left Sana cold.

She reached out to touch the girls, but failed to grasp their solid forms. She looked at Amaya and realised they were both nothing but air. The girls made their way to the library in a single file.

The day wore on. Jessie sat in the library under the softly whirring fan, her face shrouded with the pall of death.

“They’re saying she had a frail heart.”

“It’s just like what happened a few years back,” said another.

“When Amaya Wilson died?”

“Yes – she took up Jessie’s dare. They found her body in the toilet.”

There was talk about closing the grotto, and even the entire boarding school. The girls went on with their days, marking time for holidays.

Jessie sensed their withdrawal and saw the blame in their eyes. She kept to herself, but unaccountably, while brushing her teeth, bathing, having a meal, doing homework, the faces of Sana and Amaya flashed before her eyes, leaving her unsettled. She could not shake off the inexplicable feeling of being watched, stalked like prey by their shadows. She begged them for forgiveness. The feeling of guilt spread through her like ink on blotting paper.

If she was lucky, Jessie would go home for the holidays. But for now, their shadows held sway.

Shikha Bansal is a Hong Kong-based poet and writer of nonfiction. Her poems have been published in Proverse Publishing and Imprint, and her essays and articles have appeared in Imprint, Culture, and Playtime.

One hedgehog splits to two,
in the soft crack of bark;
then four in a fallen trunk,
damp wood sweating into yeast,
foam on the pale rings,
just off the path,
a moving knot.

I reach, then pull back.
Spines tick my wrist,
calm as nursing once;
warm fur, soil, musk.
I lift them to my mouth.
My tongue takes the first prick;
they slide down
and settle in my trunk,
under ribs, under shirt.

Years ago, they slept there,
gnawing my fingers for salt.
I pocketed them with crumbs,
crumb dust in the pocket seam,
walked home, rattling,
until the warmth went inward.

Late morning, I step from trees.
They rise in my gut;
sharp points press hip and shoulder.
Spines lift under my shirt like shoots.

Back in the log,
the foam dries.

Sean Wang is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominated poet and PhD candidate. His poems appear or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, ONE ART, wildscape, and literary journal, among others. He can be found on Instagram at @sean_wang1997.

The thing about writing prompts and themes is that they don’t always produce what you expect. In this case, it is our good fortune that few of the pieces in Issue #12 of The Apostrophe have an explicit connection to the conventional definitions of fortune – for example, nobody in this issue wins a fortune. (To our mild surprise, no piece includes a mention of the TV game show “Wheel of Fortune”, either.)

Instead, this issue features pieces that range from the introspective (“Hedgehogs In My Trunk”), the mysterious (“The Grotto”), and the cheeky (“Jerks in Relief”), to the poignant (“Tales of a Circle”) and the exultant (“Marcus Reclaimed”).

In the case of one piece, we’re not even sure what it’ supposed to be about – dare we take it literally? – but we love it.

We also have the good fortune to introduce several new artists and photographers in this issue, as well as welcoming a number of our favorite repeat contributors. Readers of the PDF version of The Apostrophe, which is published on the final day of each publication run, will be treated to bonus artwork that does not appear in the Substack version.

Above all, we wish all subscribers and readers an auspicious Year of the Fire Horse – full of good fortune!

To be able to express oneself through the medium of writing is a wonderful piece of good fortune.

Yet fortune is not always so kind to us. Where was Fortune when illness or war (or simply a financial setback) wrenched out our hearts out of our chests, when we received that terrible message, when we read that terrible news?

The most important characteristic of fortune is that it is fickle. Even when we have a hand in it - going on an adventure to seek our fortune, turning the great Wheel of Fortune, or perhaps being in possession of a good fortune and therefore in want of a wife - we cannot guarantee the outcome.

Tell us about your own fortunes: what brought you to where you are today? We love non-fiction as well as fiction and poetry (and hybrid). Send us a chapter of your unfinished novel, and let us wonder where fortune will take your character next. We’re relatively flexible on length so don’t worry too much about word count.

Write about your wishes, your hopes for a fortunate future, and do so in the medium of your choice. Most importantly, once you’ve written it, send it to us! We promise to read every word.

Remember, artists, we also want your photographs, drawings, and paintings that relate to this prompt! Or, if you have something you’d like to share that doesn’t have anything to do with this prompt, we’re eager to see it.

The theme for issue #12 is FORTUNE. Submissions are open from January 1 to 31, 2026. Issue #12 will be published starting on March 1, 2026. Visit our submissions page for more details.

Read Issue Eleven online here.
Get the PDF version here.

At one of his seven mansions [appraised at $77.5 million], the one closest to the hospital best known in the world for treating his particular ailment, he lay on the custom made invalid’s bed [$36,500] with IVs in each arm. Classical music was playing on low volume, on an old-school stereophile’s dream of an audio system [quad speakers: $182,400; CD player: $7,800; pre-amp: $12,000; 300W amp, $9,150; custom built turntable, $23,700, diamond needle, $4,250; hand-made cables, $8,400; custom built cabinet handmade from rare woods from Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Hungary, $62,000].

The attending nurse sat in a seventeenth-century French armchair [$45,000] quietly scrolling through her text messages. She felt a little sad that her patient was dying; she was making over three times what she would get anywhere else as a hospice nurse, and she couldn’t help wishing he would live a few months longer, long enough at least so she could get that car she’d been dreaming about. But the doctor had said he didn’t have long now, a few hours at most. She sighed and counted her blessings.

He’d fought the disease with all the money in the world—well, he would have spent all the billions he’d earned, if money could have done the trick—but money was powerless before the caprices of nature. He remembered a poem he once read, by some underpaid and forgotten poet [he had a secret weakness for poetry; the book was a first edition, priced at $1,225]. It was about Death smiling at the brave soldier on a deadly battlefield, shrugging at the preacher in his pulpit moments before an earthquake leveled his church, laughing uproariously at the rich man who thought Death could be bought off.

He’d thought that, as a rich man, he could bribe Death. If he could only see the right doctors—if only he spent enough money in the right hospitals. But it was all a waste. The pathologist, about thirty years old, had told him he had six months at most, no matter what he did. And it had been almost six months to the day.

I shouldn’t have yelled at the kid, he thought.

But he was not a man given to regrets. He didn’t waste time thinking about his six wives. He’d grown tired of them, one after another, every few years. In any case, each of them had accepted the prenup, never believing it would apply to her,

He looked at his own hand, clutching the buzzer [$368 from the latest medical supply catalogue]. He was not even 50! How could he be dying?

He wanted to shout it out the window [$2,500 including restored original sashes]. But the nearest neighbor was two miles away. His chauffeur, his four maids, his butler, gardener, and two cooks would hear, since he required all of them to live on the estate. But none of them would answer.

Most of them were wondering where their next job would come from, and if they’d be left anything in his will.

With a bitterness he hadn’t felt since childhood, he thought of his will: unwritten and unsigned. How many times had he had the same discussion with his lawyer [$775 per hour]? ‘Do it for those you love!’ the lawyer had urged him. In response, he would smile his tight little smile.

That little smile was on his lips as death entered his body. Afterwards, his servants, nurses, doctors, wondered why he was smiling at the end.

Nolo Segundo is the pen name of a retired teacher who became published in his 8^th decade in over 250 literary journals in 21 countries on 4 continents and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, thrice for Best of the Net. Cyberwit.net has published 3 poetry collections in softcover, the latest titled Soul Songs.

Sambhu Ramachandran is a bilingual poet, translator, short story writer, and academic from Kerala, India. He is currently working as Assistant Professor of English at N.S.S. College, Pandalam. His poems have been repeatedly anthologized in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and have also appeared in journals like The Bombay Literary Magazine (TBLM), Wild Court, Madras Courier, The Alipore Post, Muse India, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Setu, Sextet, and The Chakkar, among others.

When I told them I was going away for a while, Mum couldn’t understand why her only son would leave just before his birthday. She’d made plans, she said. Thirty-five years old isn’t a significant age, but as an only child it’s my duty to spend my birthday with my parents.

This year, she said, jabbing at where my birthday is marked on the calendar, she’d planned my favourite: roast beef and a treacle tart for dessert. Dad scraped his chair back. ‘For Chrissakes, he’s a grown man,’ he muttered, and went to his study, leaving his dirty plate on the table.

Mum always makes too much of my birthday, and this time, I refused to play along. This year, he would have turned eighteen. I can’t be certain he’d have been a boy, but that’s what I like to imagine. His birthday isn’t marked on the calendar. I don’t know exactly when his birthday would have been.

So I’ve come across the water, exchanging the Lincolnshire fens for the flat lands of Jutland.

On the drive from Billund airport the winds buffet my hire car. The road stretches for miles, curving away over the earth’s surface. Low buildings hunker close to the ground. Navy, mustard, burnt red.

The rental house sits at the edge of the woods, trees thin and tall behind. Ahead is the North Sea, a strip of silver on the horizon. I go inside the house, where the low roof harbours shadows. Dragging a chair outside, I shelter under a blanket and wait for the sun to set. I eat herrings and black bread. A flock of starlings pulsates above. Black Sun. That’s what the Danish call it. The sweeping flock of starlings.

On the second day, I leave the rental and swim in the sea. I jump in waves that rise high around me. Saltwater fills my nose and mouth. When I come out, my hair is matted, and my skin is the colour of sand. Windburn stings my cheeks. I crouch down, like the low houses, the sun warm on my back. The long beach is empty, but I imagine a small boy digging in the sand. Building a sandcastle, scooping out a moat.

I was seventeen. ‘You have to come and pick me up,’ Mum said on the phone. She gave me the address, and I went to collect her. She didn’t have many friends, and it couldn’t be my dad, she said, so it had to be me. Only when I arrived at the clinic did the pieces start to fall into place. Posters for counselling services lined the walls, and there were leaflets detailing post-procedure aftercare. In the waiting room, no one noticed me, a teenage boy. Women who find themselves in those places have enough to think about without wondering about anomalies like me.

Mum was slumped in a chair, pale and unsteady. She leant on my shoulder, and I helped her into a taxi. Another time, we might have got the bus, but there was no way she could make it to the bus stop. But she insisted the taxi drop us off round the corner from the house so that Dad wouldn’t see. ‘Don’t tell him. Please,’ she said. I understood. Dad would never have allowed the clinic. Those last few steps up the garden path she was almost unconscious. I hustled her upstairs, sweating through my school shirt.

Over the next couple of days, she claimed an unspecified illness and stayed in bed. Her head was aching. She felt dizzy, she couldn’t eat. Dad left her alone, as he always did when she was like that. He was used to her mood swings. ‘Women’s troubles,’ he said. ‘Weak constitution.’

She’d been that way when I was born. I knew because I’d found calendars from past years where she’d marked blue for bad days, red for good. Entire months of blue. Blocks of it after my birth. Baby blues, they would have called it. Except, this time, there was no baby.

When I tried to open her curtains, she complained and made me close them again. When I brought her something to eat, she left it untouched.

It went on like that for days, maybe weeks, the bedroom always in darkness. Dad slept in the spare room. I tried to encourage her to eat a little. Toast. Endless cups of undrunk tea. I was supposed to be studying for my A Levels.

I wasn’t allowed to ask her about it. I was to stop interrogating her. My mother’s plaintive tone when she said that made my stomach roil. I felt guilty, although I couldn’t work out what for.

One day she got up, as if the past month hadn’t happened. She tidied the house from top to bottom. ‘Told you she’d snap out of it,’ Dad said. I was able to commit more time to my schoolwork. I had six months before my exams.

Mum was back to her usual self, or so it seemed. I grew sullen. I walked the streets until late. When it got cold, I’d sit in the corner of a pub if I could get away with it, pretending to drink the dregs of someone else’s beer.

Once, we nearly spoke about it. Dad was out and I came across Mum looking through a box of my old baby clothes. She was under the eaves, searching for a suitcase. They had a holiday planned. Brittany, I think. There she was, in the attic, on her knees, holding up a tiny green jumper. I pulled myself from the ladder into the small space and crouched down so as not to bang my head. I looked into the box and pulled out a pair of shoes. I could fit them into the palm of one hand. It wouldn’t have taken much to bring the brown leather to a shine. I imagined white socks pulled halfway up little-boy calves. A pair of dungarees, a short-sleeved shirt.

‘These look barely worn,’ I said.

‘You grew out of them so quickly,’ she said, giving me a brief smile.

‘Mum….’ I hesitated. What did I want to ask her?

We heard Dad at the door. She began to pack the box up.

Within a few months, I’d left for university.

Morning in the Jutland rental: I lie in the low wooden bed, squinting at the ceiling. Last night I didn’t bother to draw the blinds, so the early light is dazzling. Overnight, the sun barely set. Instead, it swung low like a pendulum around the wide sky.

It’s peaceful in this place. I’ve been here a while, swimming in the sea that gets warmer by the day, but it doesn’t seem to be doing me much good. All this space and time. For what? To think? I’ve spent the last eighteen years thinking. Thinking, but saying nothing. Several times over the years, I’ve tried to broach the subject with Mum. She looks at me as if she has no idea what I’m talking about. Sometimes, I think I’ve imagined it all.

Eventually, I leave the low bed and go outside to walk through the shelter of the woods. A red squirrel jumps between branches before scarpering off through the trees. Overhead, I catch sight of a black-tailed buzzard. I meet no one.

After some time, I find myself at the edge of a lake. Or perhaps it’s an inlet. The water stretches for miles. Out there, away from the trees, everything is exposed to the wind. It flings the birds around and worries low-lying heathers in the fields. A marsh harrier fights against it, diving in and out of long, whipping grasses.

Later, in the evening, I sit outside on my chair. The sun is unwilling to leave. It lingers high in the sky long after I’m ready to go to bed. Deep in my blanket, I’m nearly asleep when I notice a flicker of something in the distance, the tips of flames. They’re coming from the direction of the beach.

I find myself wide awake and drawn to this wavering sign of life, and walk towards the horizon. As I draw closer, the vibrating hum of voices grows louder and I realise the whole village must be here, on the beach, gathered around the biggest bonfire I’ve ever seen. Even standing at the back of the crowd, the heat of the flames is intense. The noise of the people seems strange. For days, I’ve lived with only the sound of the wind in my head. The thrum and pound of the crowd is fierce in comparison. But they’re joyous, invigorated by the energy of the fire.

Someone nearby pours shots of a clear liquid and passes the glasses around. A man younger than me and wearing a grey scarf thrusts a shot glass into my hand. He shouts ‘skaal,’ and tips the liquid down his throat. I do the same. The liquorice flavour burns my insides. He takes the bottle and pours another generous measure into my glass. There are hot dogs sprinkled with fried, salted onion scraps. There’s cold beer, and lots more of the liquorice schnapps. There’s chanting and whooping and dancing that becomes more outlandish as the night stretches on.

Later, voices come together to sing what must be the national anthem. Afterwards, the crowd settles. People break off into smaller groups. Couples with their arms around each other. Small children asleep on shoulders.

Finally, the sun relents until the light from the flames is brighter than the light in the sky. We huddle closer to the bonfire and watch it die.

When I next look around, the crowd has thinned and only a few lolling heads in fold-out chairs remain. The man with the grey scarf has gone. The summer solstice has passed.

The next afternoon, I board a plane home. On the ascent, I catch sight of the beach and the charred remains of the bonfire from the night before. As we fly out over the North Sea, I lean back and doze, and in my dream the hum of the plane becomes the sound of the wind.

A published author of short fiction, poetry and writer of female-led novels, Holly won the Page Turner Award for Best Contemporary Fiction 2024 with her first manuscript Wooden Dolls. Previously, it won the Portfolio Prize 2023 (MA, University of Lancaster). Alongside working on her second novel, Holly also publishes Beyond the Book Cover on Substack. Originally from the UK, she has lived in Hong Kong for four years.

Beyond the Book Cover

Beyond the Book Cover: join me as I share brief personal reflections on book covers that hold special meaning.

By Holly Sykes