Fraser Gehrig after a dirty bump

About the author

Sam Morley

Sam Morley’s work has been published in various journals and has been shortlisted in the Montreal International Poetry Prize. He is the 2022 recipient...

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Reluctant farewell to a trusted companion

Non-fiction‘We have the same stroller,’ a woman in the line said to me. I turned and there she was, my first friend. A New York mother of two with her stroller. The same stroller! In black.

Non-fictionI CAN MAP your life by what was lost. History (personal and other). Culture. Language. Identity. Home, and all the references to you that it could have held. The very idea of home. The streets you would have walked down, streets that know the history of your family, of those who came before you. The chance to be the version of yourself who grew up with your biological family. The stories that should have been your birthright.

Everything you could possibly imagine

FictionJoseph was one of the only patients I’d truly enjoyed interacting with, which for the weeks since his arrival had helped me cope with the ward’s sense of monotony. His beard was like a cartoon lumberjack’s, descending into a fine point and thick enough to hold objects if they were stuck into it – which, of course, we’d tried. His eyebrows erupted like old-growth forest across his forehead, almost demanding to be touched – which, of course, I hadn’t.