12th July 2025

Monthly Newsletter

Soft-Boned

By Sá Shellard

‘There was the obdurate ossuary lifting itself, the bone’s index,

the tibial rosaries, the zebra tattoo,

or the striped ruban.

But if everything is mixed up, then,

How can the shadow of a place repeat old distant shadows

the same fears, the same damp

the same desire?’

(An Inherent Tear - Rodrigo Quijano)

A thousand and one, or more. I count the wriggly patterns on the walls until my body slowly evaporates to ‘Someplace Else’. Someplace Else, being the real name to an unnamed road where Andy & I played Cowboys & Thieves.

We used to march through sandbanks and gravel pits until day down.
Our bellies glowed, unperturbed by the sun’s lucidity. We came very close to riding the aura.

You know, before I got into the habit of playing dead for weeks at a time, I would have never considered the practice of posing still, or wishing the day away. Big kid game had me wrapped inside a summer dream, lost in the chuckle of a sad vacation.

I exist very little this way, like a beetle belly-spun into the thread count, I’m staring at the ceiling, wishing I’d stayed a star.

But if life’s a plaything and I’m only half-mine, who’s keeping score?
I mean, really?

By the time girlhood thundered out of my room, June had already passed me by, unnerved by the rules of its own cruel game. A game I never asked to play.

I’m turning 30 in two months, and I’ve decided that this alone grants me enough merit to arrive as battered and bruised as the love-me-nots!

It’s a dramatic exit, but if you know me, then you know that I really wouldn’t have it any other way.

With love,
Sá

Landing Practice 06

Landing Practice 07

Landing Practice 05