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Here we are, back on Zoom;&nbsp;two thumbnail windows of breath and worry."How’s the weather?” he asks,and the sky files a quarterly report: temperature, wind pressure, UV;as if survival required a spreadsheet of air. Small talk makes me want to scream.&nbsp;I won’t.I will smile like a hostage who learned to juggle,&nbsp;but hear me: Our mouths didn’t evolve to inventory clouds.They were built for vows and plots,&nbsp;for naming what hurts and what might heal,for the dangerous transfer of truth. Spare me the barometer.&nbsp;Ask me why I couldn’t sleep.&nbsp;Tell me where you hide your courage.&nbsp;Confess the thing you nearly did.&nbsp;Show me the idea that keeps pacing your ribcage.&nbsp;Let’s risk a sentence that could change a day. I know the forecast.&nbsp;It is always mixed.&nbsp;Scattered joy. Intermittent grief.&nbsp;A high chance of absurdity, clearing late.&nbsp;That’s weather enough. So here’s my policy: we leave the phatic at the door.&nbsp;I will nod once to the sky; courtesy paid; then spend breath on what we came for:&nbsp;the work, the wonder, the honest cut. Report this, if you must:conditions remain existential,&nbsp;visibility: human,and from now on, cut to what matters. F.S.F

The Phatic

When joy pours, I write. When joy quits, I write.Two peaks: toast and bruise. Same pen. Same hand.On the first, glass lifts. Laughter pays. I name the light. I name what happens. A line, then another.On the second, the call drops. A door holds. Grief sets a bill on the table. I pay in lines. Pulse slows. A page keeps faith.Between peaks: craft. I keep a ledger. A break frees breath. Rhyme loans time. Metaphor converts heat.Wilde tapping my cuff: If bliss fails, be exact. If pain crowds, cut. If neither yields; ..revise.We win twice: from the wine of the winning, and from the ash that we fold into the next flame. Joy gives. Hurt gives. I spend both into speech.Reader, keep the receipt. Tonight paid in song. Tomorrow may pay in thorns. Bank both. Walk on.F.S.F

Double Win

You,…yes, you, pretending not to check your own reflection; are seven octillion unruly accomplices currently operating under your name.Before they were you, they toured: crowd-surfing supernovae, heckling gravity, getting light-headed on nebulae, mock-up planets, flirting with the dark. Now they draw wages in your hands, your lungs, that peculiar brain that wakes at 3 a.m. to replay saying “you too” to a waiter who said “enjoy your meal.”Each blink: the universe one-eyed, taking aim at a kiss. Each laugh: infinity sloshing its drink. You’re not in the cosmos so much as on its payroll; paid in breath, spending it quickly.And here’s the turn no telescope catches: those atoms didn’t cross light-years to make a souvenir. They came to be spent on something that can say yes or no. So spend them.Spend them on the text trembling in your draft, the apology that stings like swallowed stars, five extra minutes with grief's quiet ghost, the vow you chase though certainty eludes.Be precise about your absurdity. Love like a meteor with bad brakes. Let the impact rearrange the landscape, then sign your name in the new dust so everyone knows who finally showed up. F.S.F

Your Atoms are Drunk and in Love with You.

I Swipe. Diagnose. Dismiss. The thumb is a guillotine, and mercy skews the trial. I log on at 2 a.m. honesty’s coma hour.II Every profile is a clinical file. Hobby: hiking. Translation: escapism. Quote from Rumi. Prognosis: denial. Dog photo. Treatment: gentle ghosting.III My bio reads: Doctorate in catastrophes, minor in regret. Swipe right for the worst best decision of your week. It filters out optimists and people who spell definitely as definately.IV Openers; scalpel cuts. “Name your favourite failure.” “Ever tounged an abyss” Emojis earn my prescribed hush.V We match, we chat, we glitch. She flirts with possibility; I counter with statistics: divorce rate 32%, love recidivism 78%, side-effects include hope, bruising, and poetry.VI When I like one, sabotage surges. “Let’s skip dinner and read each other’s medical records.” Unmatch. Screenshot sealed in my ledger of auto-erasure. [Unmatch.] VII Yet once a month I meet one. We talk until the coffee acquires orbit. She laughs at my nihilism, calls it foreplay. I almost believe her, so I leave first.VIII Account deactivated. Thirty-six hours of abstinence, then the void whispers, Maybe the next swipe is the control group. I reinstall, reload, resume.IX Toast with tepid latte; the carousel of near-misses. I will diagnose hearts, I won’t graft; scribbling post-mortems on napkins, waiting for one pulse I can’t outwrite. F.S.F

An Ode to Tinder

He traced a fretful chart through coffee-rings on butcher’s paper, each curl a throbbing heart.Pencil-hail skipped and scored, plotting the A-side of intention, then ripping at the chord.Forty-seven drafts took flight, smudged confessions on the tabletop; graphite ghosts of night.A cracked alarm barked “Go!” His sockets burned; the sunrise waited, boots muttered, “Maybe so.”Road gravel kissed his soles, pepper-hot; inside the sting he tasted half-remembered goals.Steam of sharp bergamot uncoiled from chipped porcelain, tying his tongue in knot.An underpass in rust showed Prufrock’s dare in bleeding spray, through concrete, rain, and dust.He mouthed the line, went mute; tea cooled to glassy doubt while mist pin-pricked a crooked snoot.With shrug of paper wings he left the cup, the woman’s glance, the hour’s nagging rings.At mile thirteen he met a mirror-traveller, shoes still shining, alphabet complete.Her feather-light rucksack ticked like a distant metronome; his own pack growled back.“Z’s a cul-de-sac,” she grinned, and tossed confetti alphabets; letters skinned and thinned.She pressed into his palm a map that shimmered slick as oil, each waypoint stamped perhaps.GPS kept glitching: “2B … NOT FOUND—re-route, re-route,” an inner code-switch itching.His heartbeat upped the pace; he sealed the map inside his coat, left tremor in its place.An elixir-cart rolled near, brass vials of mercury fizz announcing shortcuts out of fear.He drank; metallic zing whipped tongue into a marching drum, and gravel learned to sing.Boot-leather struck in time; till gears mis-clicked; his knees betrayed him, cadence turned to mime.Cliff face, chalk-white with glare, invited flight—one foot stepped outward, the other nailed in air.Vertigo’s velvet hush opened a parenthesis of doubt; he coloured it with blush.&nbsp;* breath* &nbsp;* breath* silence tightened round the rim of his unspoken death.He crawled to safer soil, spat iron filings from his gums, resumed the futile toil.A market-inn at dusk: pastry crumbs like constellations starred his trembling husk.He bartered pride for sleep, devised a boot of baling twine, a compass mesmerised.At dawn the cogs refused; the lever sobbed, the needle whirled, his ego stood accused.He inked a blame-list long, black threads spidering the page-grain, bitter as bruised oolong.Mirror puddle showed cracks; he shattered it to stop reflection, still sensed the furtive tracks.Through nettles he limped bare, green lashes striping ankle-skin; a self-flagellant’s prayer.Fog thick as drying ink erased the verge, erased his shadow, left only thought-smudge brink.A sagging sign declared Z—one hundred metres. Wind rehearsed a dirge for tread.“Z needs an empty drum!” He fasted till his hollow ribs knocked time like bone on drum.He knelt, unlaced one boot, and asked the grass which way to lean; it whispered nothing new.Echoes, faint and thin, drummed distant heel-beats down the track; his own, or hers, or twin?He rose—not east nor west;&nbsp; but sideways into whispering dusk; coffee-rings closed the quest.F.S.F

Atlas of abandoned paths

Once upon a sideways Thursday in the Duchy of Saint-Raphael, I, Henri LeClonk, former timekeeper to kings, inventor of the seven-sided sundial, and proud survivor of three croissant-related near-deaths, was charged with a most noble task:To design the scoring system for tennis. I, who could not count past 12 without glancing at a timepiece.I, who considered numbers a polite suggestion.I, who was three goblets deep into absinthe before the rules even began.But the guillotine is a fine motivator. It started well enough.The Duke declared, “Let the score march like the clock! 15! 30! 45!” and I, dazzled by his chin and distracted by a rogue puff pastry, nodded as if I’d understood.“Etch it onto the sundial!” he roared.So, I did.Well… I tried.What I etched: 15, 30, 40.Because, dear reader, midway through, I forgot how to 45. There was a goose in the parlour, the sun was in my eyes, and the number “40” simply looked... friendlier. Rounder. Less judgmental.I proceeded to choke on a croissant, keeling over into a platter of unamused cheese, and by the time I awoke, the number had already been etched into law. No one questioned it. Nobles rarely do. Now, about love. A strange zero of a word. It came not from logic (we avoided that), but from the Duke’s moon-eyed brother, Lord Fifteenlove.He was a symphony of sighs in tights, hopelessly besotted with a barefoot commoner named Margaux. She played tennis like a flamingo on buttered glass. Never scored, sometimes in deliberate anarchy. Yet he kept showing up, flower in hand, chest puffed, whispering sonnets to her ankles.The Duke once joked, “He plays for love, not for points!”And thus, “love” came to mean zero; a romantic futility. An empty goblet. A heartbeat spent with no return. One boiling summer, two knights played; by the seventh hour their forty-all deadlock mocked the sun; I abandoned scoring, my quill bleeding pigeons across the margin.At sundown, drenched in sweat and honour, they raised their swords and yelled:&nbsp;“Let us finish this with a DEUCE!”I, still hungover from Wednesday’s absinthe, convinced deuce was some sort of Latin for “draw,” and picturing my own neck in that lunette, carved the rule without protest. From that moment on, 40–40 was forevermore Deuce. Players had to win by two, because swords were involved, and frankly, we preferred fewer stabbings. Then came Lady Claudette, the Duke’s wife…. sharp as a stiletto in a bowl of custard.“People must be at an advantage,” she said. “In tennis, or in love.”And so, “Advantage” was born. If you reached that stage and still lost, spectators would murmur, “He had the advantage, but no heart.”I rather liked that. Years drift. I dwell beside a swamp, forging clocks that tick backwards, volleying pebbles with a wooden spoon.Sometimes village children rally over my cracked court. When their shouts ring; “Love-fifteen!” “Deuce!”, I feel phantom steel cool my neck and hear absinthe glug in a glass that is, mercifully, still attached to a body.The world keeps my crooked time. I lift the spoon but never serve. F.S.F.

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

The Phatic

Double Win

Your Atoms are Drunk and in Love with You.

An Ode to Tinder

Atlas of abandoned paths

The Tick of Love