Seascraper

by Benjamin Wood

Some people are so righteous in their minds they can’t accept mistakes in others. They would rather cradle condemnation at their breasts than help someone in trouble. He can’t understand that kind of bitterness at all.

He’s always been suspicious of excitement – nothing he anticipates is ever worth the wait or turns out quite the same as he expects

But Pop would often tell him how you had to stay alive to opportunities in life, to never fail to notice when they tap you on the shoulder – and it seems he’s being tapped.

in whose distant settings he could sense the tangled fabric of himself, some yearning to be faraway.

She has the neatest set of teeth, blue eyes that seem to lighten every time they turn in his direction.

When you’re young, you think life is a string of choices. It’s either you choose this door or the other door, or jump out of the window. You don’t realise that most of what’ll happen to you is because of other people’s choices. There’s a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape.

‘Do I hear the ocean?’ ‘No.’ ‘I’m hearing water. You don’t hear it, too?’ ‘I hear the Irish Sea. The ocean’s a few hundred miles south-west.’

He needs to reconcile the things he wants with what he’s able to achieve,