Hannah Moore
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Stories (282)
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Roulette. Top Story - October 2023.
This is for Paul Stewart's Unnerve, Unsettle, and Scare Me Challenge, linked here: I was still a little drunk when I got off the bus, full of bottled confidence, bolstered by camaraderie. It had been a good night. We’d talked and laughed, danced a little, and sat shoulder to shoulder in the humid fug of the club, knowing ourselves to be radiant and ripe with power. I had promised I would get a taxi, but I knew I was going to walk. I wanted to walk, to feel the night and the strength in my legs. Plus, it was ridiculous to get a taxi for less than a mile. That dick on the bus wasn’t going to push me around, sitting there, staring at me. Touching himself under his coat I think. Fuck him. I should be able to walk where I want to walk. Shouldn’t have to be afraid.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Fiction
Marrakesh
It was my third visit to Marrakesh, and I was not unfamiliar with the city, despite the quarter century which separated the first from the last of those visits. That’s the thing about ancient cities – they don’t change all that quickly, not in the parts that pull the tourists in, anyway. My first visit was part of a larger backpacking journey through Morocco. This was back when my back was strong of course. My best friend and I, at the dawn of our twenties, travelled the country by bus and train, carrying our worlds on our backs and relishing the soreness of our shoulders and the fatigue in our legs. I ate so much amazing food on that trip. My favourite, still my favourite, was a piping hot vegetable tagine, the oil still bubbling in the clay dish and the vegetables, alive with aromatic spices, as tender as a perfect pear. Or perhaps the fresh mint tea, served from high above the gold trimmed glasses in a steaming gurgle of water, the insane sweetness of the sugar lacing the improbable coolness of the mint. I have recreated this at home with several varieties of mint grown in pots in my garden, but in the same way that Mediterranean light lends everything a clarity more northern latitudes cannot emulate, the tea I brew at home falls flat in comparison.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Feast
Hypsacremia
Jolene stood by her gate post, studiously disinterested in the world around her as she trimmed a perfect rose. Mercy spotted her from the corner, and watched as Jolene paused, looked around her, and then slowly made the same cut an inch lower. She crossed the street, hoping to make it to her own front door unobserved.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Fiction
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
I come from a long line of cooks. In my own lifetime, my mother was a cook, and her mother before her, and I have learnt from much from them. Of course, I am defining “cook” as someone obligated to serve up meals in order to preserve life. For my grandmother the advent of the domestic freezer, and shops catering for its use, was a revolution in catering, and the addition of a microwave opened up brave new worlds! I well remember the stacks of frozen pizzas, ten packed cylindrically in a plastic sheath, with which she embraced international cuisine. Très sophistiqué, oui?
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Feast
Unspoken
Through the front windscreen, I can see my son on the pavement, head slightly dipped, shoulders tipped forward against the weight of his school work filled rucksack. He never looks my way, but navigates straight to me, opens the door, and slides in. The back door, not the front. The back seat.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Families
Getting Serious
Generally, this platform is my place to play, but today is World Mental Health Day. Which is not to say there isn’t space to be playful when thinking about mental health. Playfulness, after all, is a route to several fundamental protective elements of good mental health – connection, cognitive flexibility, learning and pleasure. But I’m not playing when I say that mental health awareness is important. According to the World Health Organisation, nearly three quarters of a million people die by suicide every year, and this is the tip of the iceberg – the stark, measurable tip. Below the water line people in their millions are impacted by struggles with mental health difficulties, in themselves or those they care about. Most of us, I would say, have a stake in that iceberg. And this is just it – most of us.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Psyche
Autumn Days. Top Story - October 2023.
The pavement is pied with amber, russet, browns of every shade, its dirty grey now pooled with rough edged warmth, papering the fissures in rain slick copper and bronze. Our feet upon it step in time, the rhythm of many years of walking side by side, on spring bright grass, on summer scorched earth and on autumnal mulch, layers of leaf mould soft and giving beneath us. We have matured together, stride for stride, and delight in this easy symbiance even as we take it for granted now. Weaving our bodies, more stiffly that when our spines were fresh and sinuous, around the wooden kissing gate and into the glow of the wood at the end of the lane, we both start to listen for familiar sounds, the soft curring bass of the wood pigeons, the liquid treble of the goldfinch, the shrill pips of the robins, but always, the soft footfalls of the other, the shifts in attention, the breath, the ever present breath.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Fiction
Placing Wagers
This story is part of the Vocal + Assist on Facebook Lost in a Story Challenge. You can learn more about it here: There is a foreword to this tale, which was born of a shared enjoyment of the wonderful film of The Princess Bride. This short piece was written as collaborative piece between myself and Mother Combs.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Fiction
