Her name was Bo and she was the first girl I ever loved. I was ten years old, a shy skinny brown boy with a mop of black curls, and Bo wasn’t just out of my league – she had descended from another universe. Bo was tall and beautiful, with sparkling white teeth and golden hair that swung in braid…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘They couldn’t put their finger on exactly what it was they craved, but they knew it was very different to what they had.’
Fiction by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.
‘People say it’s healthy for couples to fight, it means there’s still passion. I’ve always assumed that was bullshit, but now I’m not sure.’
Fiction by Brad Phillips.
‘Being recognised as part of a couple thrilled me; I felt legitimised. John had a life, a full life.’
Fiction by Sophie Collins.
‘The script of script production rather followed the script of sex: it was intimate, exciting, boundary-crossing, and left the participants changed.’
Susan Pedersen on paranormal love in the Balfour family.
‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘A breast just casually hanging around, being a functional exocrine gland, enjoying the sun? Impossible.’
Tishani Doshi on women’s rights in India.
