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I don’t believe in ghosts,
Not the rattling of chains or the cold breath down my neck.
But I’ve heard the floorboards groaning in the night,
As if the if they carry the weight of those we won’t forget.

I don’t believe in shadows,
Stretching in long branches of darkness under my door.
They pool like spilled ink between the cracks,
Curling fingers scraping across the floor.

I don’t believe in whispers,
The brush of voices in the air that trace bodiless words against my ear.
Empty silence filled with my own criticism,
Broken sobs that linger even when no one stands near.

I don’t believe in footsteps,
Pausing when I pause, circling when I hide.
I hold my breath, waiting for silence to return,
But they slither along the edges, just beyond my side.

I don’t believe in eyes,
But they watch me from the corners of my room.
The blinking light that crawls closer and closer,
Scowls that twist and stretch toward impending doom.

I don’t believe in the cold,
Not the rippling chill that sends shivers up my spine.
But it coils around me anyway, slithering beneath my blankets,
Finding the places where warmth refuses to linger.

I don’t believe in doors,
Yet they creak open on their own, wake me from a restless sleep.
And in the hollow halls that follow beyond, something lurks in wait,
A hunger that stirs with secrets buried too deep.

Sound didn’t wait outside. It never does. It crashed in, uninvited. Unannounced. All-consuming in the narrow hallway, filling the space before I could embrace it.

I heard it before I saw it, sharp echoes of boots on tile, the low murmur of someone talking too loud into a phone, the laugh that wasn’t meant for me but landed anyway.

By the time I reached the room, Sound was already there. Sprawled across furniture, stretched out on the floorboards, tucked into every corner like it had always belonged. Moving constantly around me, a dance of focus darting between reality and paranoia. Rattled windowpanes. Clicking pens. Humming fans. It all tapped restless fingers against my skull.

I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over it. Couldn’t remember what quiet was. Not when Sound buzzed in the light, whistled in the wind, purred from the fridge.

Sound was clever like that. Knew how to mimic joy in the echo of safety. A song from a memory I didn’t ask for, pulling at threads I thought I’d knotted shut. The gentle coo of a mourning dove in the early morning. Static from a TV on the wrong channel.

It wrapped itself around me, like the conversation at a party I didn’t want to attend, where every voice expects an answer and none of them pause to breathe.

Sometimes Sound became the people I know. Not the real ones, but suggestions of them. My name called from another room. Footsteps on the stairs. A caught behind a closed door. Enough to make me turn my head. Enough to make me wonder if I was ever truly alone.

I tried to shut it out. I tried to drown it out, tried to block Sound from my mind. I turned up the music, covered my ears, screamed until my throat was hoarse and lungs empty. But Sound just layered itself, noise upon noise, until every distraction had their own ghost.

Because Sound is persistent. Sometimes it’s just a presence, a background character in the storyline of your life. The hiss of a steam in a café. The clatter of cutlery on ceramic. A phone buzzing on a table.

But sometimes, Sound forgets to soften its edges, and the background becomes a roar you cannot escape.

Photo courtesy of Dibakar Roy

Silence arrived quickly, like it had nowhere else to be but in this small room where I sat alone. It arrived without notice, no announcing of its presence, no demand for attention. Just a presence that settled next to me, heavy as a woollen cloak draped over my shoulders, a pressing weight, soft and unyielding.

At first I tried to ignore it, turning from the absence of sound and pretending it was nothing more than empty air, a stranger in an empty room. But silence wasn’t empty. It leaned closer, a watcher to my thoughts, a waiting breath I couldn’t exhale.

It didn’t speak, just sat. Listening. Lurking. Looming. Undeniable with each rasp against my neck. Impossible to truly forget.

I wanted to break it, shatter the quiet with noise or words. I tried shouting into the emptiness, filling the space with music, laughter, anything but this heavy, dragging quiet. Silence always came back. Stepping into the room when each sound faded away, returning to that open seat beside me.

So I turned.

It didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift. It held its ground, staring knowingly through my hesitation. A breath on my neck daring me to speak. But I didn’t, words tangled in my throat, swallowed by the consuming weight.

Instead, I reached out, fingers brushing the shape, cool and still, like the calm before a storm. Silence didn’t pull away. It settled deeper, folding around me like a secret that had waited too long to be told, soft as dust, yet heavy as the weight I’d carried all along.

And it was only then I realised Silence wasn’t empty at all. It was the quiet language of everything I couldn’t say.

To me you’re just a chapter,
A season written in pawprints and fur.
A handful of years folded softly between heartbreaks,
A quiet echo of love that will always endure.

Your character will come to an end,
Pages turned from the start to the blur.
Stories unfold and new chapters begin,
But for you, I am all that you were.

I am the voice that wakes you from your dreams,
The steady rhythm beneath your paws.
The warmth in every lunchtime nap,
The quiet comfort in the world’s small flaws.

While my life spins onwards, far and wide,
A thousand stories yet to be told.
You live in each moment, unchanging and still,
Where my love is the only world you hold.

No other voices call you home,
No other touch as soft or sure.
In every glance, a silent promise,
That here, with me, you are secure.

So when my chapters twist and change,
And I am lost in dreams anew,
Remember, in your world of now,
My whole book lives within you.

Once there was a garden, hidden deep within a quiet heart. It grew a tapestry of blossoms that whispered colours only the soul could see. Blushing roses beneath the gentle caress of moonlight, porcelain lilies brimming with dreams, ivy curling around ancient stone like the fingers of time. The air was a perfumed breath of lavender and the wind hummed lullabies through dancing leaves.

But soft words were the sunlight, warm and tender, nurturing quiet grace. They reached into the darkest corners, coaxing life from shadows where silence once held sway. In this garden, every whispered hope was a fragile bud, and every sigh a gentle rain that fell softly to the earth below.

Each flower a seed that fell from unseen hands, words scattered like whispered promises in a forgotten language. Petals bloomed in the hush between breaths, woven from the threads of laughter, sorrows and dreams across time. Vines were sentences of gentle insistence, binding stories together and shielding cracks of broken vows.

Over time, the garden changed. Roots became tangled regrets, and the rose’s thorns wept from memories too sharp to forget. Brambles crept quietly with silent intent, born from doubt and fractured truths, choking the light.

Once delicate paths grew narrow, overgrown with weeds that spoke in brittle tongue and bitterness. And the ivy, once a gentle protector, tightened its hold, cracking stones with the strain of untold stories.

Sweet air turned thick, suffocating on longing and loss. And the harmonic wind of lullabies turned to a rustle, like pages torn from a book no one dared to finish.

Yet still, the garden listened. Waiting beneath the weight of words, every echo that clung to leaves like morning due. There was tenderness to the ruin, as if even the sorrow had roots, and the grief too could flower.

All it took was a single word, spoken with care. Not to erase the thorns, or chase away the vines. But in that hush, a bud trembled, quivering in the quiet as if weighing the silence that followed, unsure if this word, too, might bruise.

But it stayed. And in its stillness, the garden shifted. A breath returning after a long-held headache.

There was no undoing the overgrowth, no erasing stories etched in bark and thorn. But the word, just one, was a key, not a cure. It opened a path, narrow, tender and true.

The heart, that quiet soil from which all things rose, learned again how to hold without hurting, how to speak without scarring. Not because the weight of words vanished, but because finally they carried with care. All it took was a single word carried gently enough to let something begin again.

Through midnight air, she danced,
A fleeting shadow, wild and free.
Each step she took a whisper through night,
A song of storm and mystery.

Beneath the moon she twirled and spun,
A beauty in waltz and wail.
Her turns sent forth electric flames,
Carving paths beyond the gale.

A beckon towards the lighting,
Tracing steps across the sky.
Her breath thunder, soft yet near,
A roaring lover’s sigh.

She danced through the chaos,
Power raw and thought divine.
Fury calm, but never soothed,
Her motions clear, both sharp and fine.

Waves bowed to her command,
A pulse across the sea.
With graceful fury in her hand,
A tempest born in melody.

So, if you see her dancing,
Wings in whispered flight.
Know each drop of rain’s a note in song,
A warning veiled in purest light.

If I were made of paper,
I’d ripple like waves in the sea.
My edges as sharp as secrets,
Folding tight with mystery.

I’d whistle through each chapter,
Lines etched by age and time.
Some worn with blurred impressions,
Some set in steady rhyme.

If I were made of paper,
I’d fold into passing dreams.
A swan, a crane, a frog, a plane,
Or a boat down silver streams.

Each crease a breath, a quiet song,
Tracing paths of moments seen.
Lines that stretch so far and long,
Holding the places I have been.

I may be crinkled, I may torn,
And lost my pure white glow.
My stains are what the world might see,
But they’re the marks that help me grow.

If I were made of paper,
Maybe then you’d see.
I’m far from perfect, far from clean,
But every flaw belongs to me.

I’m still here you know.

Same shelf. Same room. Quiet as ever.

You don’t say goodnight anymore.
That’s okay.

I remember when you did.
Every night.
Sometimes twice if the shadows felt too big.

You used to tuck me in beside you, right under your chin. You said I made the dark softer. That I kept the bad dreams away.

I tried my best, I really did. I took your nightmares into my stuffing so you could sleep without fear. They’re still there, tucked between the stitches where you used to hold me tight. And when the night gets heavy, I carry them quietly, so you never have to.

You don’t reach for me anymore. It’s been so long now.
Your bed grew wider. Your hands grew bigger. The tears stopped spilling out loud, and the need for me faded away.

I don’t mind the quiet.
I just miss your voice.

Sometimes you stand in the doorway and look around, like you’re trying to remember something you lost.
Your eyes never find me.

But I see you.
I always have.

You sound different now.
Your footsteps drag where they once danced.
 You carry the weight of many things but hold little light inside.
Your smile has grown quiet and rare. Once bright eyes and rosy cheeks shadowed with fatigue.

I wish you’d let me hold some weight.
I was good at that, once.
I caught your tears before they fell, now you bury them deep in your pillow, where I can’t reach.

There may be dust in my ears now, and a little tear on my side, but I work just the same. I promise.
The very same me you called brave, the one who stood beside you through pouring rain and muddy adventures, never letting go.

Even when the light’s gone.
Even when no one remembers I’m here.
Even when the room is empty, and I hear the walls begin to close in.

I know you don’t think of me anymore.
I know the world is too big for things like me now.

But I think of you.
All the time.

I’m still here you know. 

June marks the celebration of Central Church’s fiftieth anniversary

This June, the congregation of Torquay’s Central Church are celebrating the fiftieth birthday of their remarkable building. Construction of the church began in June of 1975, and saw three older buildings removed to make way for the new site, which became the place of worship for members of two denominations, Methodist and United Reformed, to come together as one congregation.

Of the sixty-five active churches in Torquay, Central Church’s history goes back as far as some of the oldest. The church is one of three different backgrounds: one of these, Union Street Methodist Church, was established in 1807, over two-hundred years ago. It was in 1971, though, that Central Church was founded, when Union Street Methodist Church, along with two others, united into one congregation.

Their new building is famous for its pierced screen wall façade, the top of which forms the shape of three crosses, representing the three congregations that united to create the church. This design is a point of controversy for many. Nikolaus Pevsner, author of the ‘Buildings of England’ series, called it “forceful but rather crude”. Its modern style separates it from the many older buildings used by other churches in Torquay.

Although Belgrave United Reformed Church was demolished to make way for the new building, three of its beautiful stained-glass windows were saved, and can now be seen inside Central Church. The older building that these windows come from suffered from structural scars caused by its restoration in the late 1940s, after it was damaged by a bomb blast during World War Two. This was why the congregation were inspired to build a more modern, comfortable church where they could hold worship.

Central Church remains an active part of the Torquay community and has several events planned for the coming weeks. On July 5^th, the Torbay Police Community Choir and the Avon & Somerset Constabulary Choir will be performing there, and on July 25^th a Q&A session with MP Steve Darling will be held inside. Central Church meets for worship every Sunday at 10:30am.