artofsmallthings.com / black cat

Black Cat

Updated: 27 Sept 2026 - this body of work came in pieces. I started on a writing workshop and where prompts were given daily. I didn't always follow the prompts but it helped me to get started. The scenes form whole in my mind's eye, complete with sound, smell and taste.

A friend said these pieces read more like scenes in a play. The lies can be read like a lone voice in the dark.

The politics in these pieces live in bodies, not in arguments. What a body holds for other people, what it refuses, what it knows before anyone has a chance to think it out.

1Create from Nothing2026 Feb 51: On attention, exile, and returning to what is already yours
2A Place Where No One Performs2026 Feb 112: And No One Needs To
3Walk With Me2026 Feb 143: Depth without performance
4The Bars — Lie 12026 Feb 20LIE4: A lie. On self-abandonment
5I Didn't Look Down — Lie 22026 Feb 27LIE5. A Lie. I just never noticed someone was holding it.
6Body2026 Mar 26. Before the floor
7GuangZhou2026 Mar 87. Where the squeezing stopped
8Four Days More2026 Mar 118. You haven't solved anything. You've just been somewhere else.
9I know you did2026 Mar 149. He was present, warm, and somewhere else entirely.
10The Studio Floor2026 Mar 1710. The week had been ordinary. That was the thing about it.
11Without Looking2026 Mar 1911. The table stays the same. You don't.
12Sometime in the Future2026 Mar 2112. A kitchen tells the truth before the people in it do.
13The Week Before2026 Mar 2213. What the Heart Records When No One's Watching
14The Room is There2026 Mar 2414. A meditation on space and sensation
15Not Enough Room2026 Mar 2715. A Man Who Has Never Spent a Saturday in His Own Apartment
16The Garden Won't Do Itself2026 Apr 116. Twelve Days of Being Nobody in Particular
17Neither of you is Lying - Lie 32026 Apr 4LIELie 17: Enough honest doors, built from True materials, add up to a house you can live in with integrity.
18The Return2026 Apr 918. He only knew his part.
19Enough: another lie about love2026 Apr 14LIE19. Lie. She asked the right question. I was answering mine.
20Kunming2026 Apr 1420. 昆明 — Bright Clarity
22Two Lines2026 Apr 1421. He left the notebook on the desk. The phone was enough.
23Not the Margin, but the person first2026 Apr 1923. It is enough to have done today's part.
24Burn out is what you call it2026 Apr 2024. HCMC - 2014
25Sixty-Thirty-Ten2026 Apr 2225. The ease of something exact
26Not in the way you mean2026 Apr 2326. KL, December 2014
27What Was Owed2026 Apr 2627. Dec 2024 - He Was Fifty-One. He Had Been, By Every Account, Very Busy.
28The Borrowed Coat2026 May 2528. She had been looking. Just not only at dogs.
29Four Hours Is More Than Enough2026 May 2729. On stopping before you're wrecked
30The Handle Sits2026 May 2830. A morning in Spottiswoode
31The Uncommon Kitchen2026 Jun 231. She had made this dish close to the way her mother had made it and not close at all
32The Right Number2026 Jun 232. A lie. The knowledge lives in the correction.
33The Live2026 Jun 333. You think watching is safer. It isn't.
34The Right Height2026 Jun 434. Things had been surfacing. She wasn't sure when they started.
35Still Landing2026 Jun 635. The current runs differently than the script assumed it would.
36The Longer Walk2026 Jun 1036. He had been in other people's questions all day.
37The Architecture of Nothing2026 Jun 13LIE37. A Lie. What are you the gravity of?
38What Holds2026 Jun 2138. Saying it had become less effort than not saying it.
39The Writing Night2026 Jun 2239. The love was in the not-needing-to-look.
40What the survival was for2026 Jun 24LIELie 40. The instruction was given in good faith.
41The Apple2026 Jun 2741. She wasn't closing any doors. She just wasn't opening them either.
42Start Small2026 Jul 2942. The first time you've said that out loud.
43Uncomfortable Questions2026 Jul 31A Sunday brunch in Singapore. Two neighbours ask each other about marriage, wanting, and who they’d grow old beside - questions they can’t ask themselves.
44Something came Loose2026 Sep 27A phone call with David about hiring his mother’s caregiver turns into real advice about dignity over competence. Walking home, Amandha faces down a marriage built on staying rather than wanting, and decides to keep her own flat unfinished, on purpose.
45Never Twice2026 Oct 3LIEA dog’s thirteen years of reading a body versus a screen. When she finally trusts the first signal instead of waiting for a second one, something between them settles differently.