Hannah Moore
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Achievements (31)
Stories (267)
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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
My Mycorrhizal Moment
Running was never my thing. It wasn’t yours either, but if I could rely on anything, it was that you would be there, through every flight of fancy I took up. Better or worse. Sickness and health. And so it is that as I stagger to a stop, lungs grating in my suddenly too small chest, you are there. I reach out, searching for that solid reassurance, and let myself lean a little of my weight against you as I pull in air. Other runners pass, a cyclist, walkers in brisk ones and striding twos. But you wait, as I let my breathing ease, let me be unhurried, let me recover my legs, my hand against your solid strength, feeling the pulse of you beneath palm and thumb and all four fingers, letting mine slow towards it, anchoring myself to you, again. A warmth creeps up my calves, my thighs, my trunk, a post-run glow, and on my bare arms my skin turns to the echo from you, the pores like a thousand sunflowers, finding, in that shared warmth between us, a welcome. I let my shoulder lean into you, feel the soft give in your skin, the hard strength beneath, and think about how you need both, to survive in this world. Strength and flex. We’ve done a lot of that, over the years. Survived so much, me flying in great arcs which stretch away, and away, till it looks for all the world that I have set myself adrift, and then, listing, turning, returning, to you, your deep rooted assurance, your promise that all will be as it should, whether I rush or take rest, in the end. And you? I trace the lines of my name, the date we met, etched on your skin, the lines softer edged that they once were, a testament to how you have grown around me, around everything that has come, never falling, never fleeing, always growing, flex and strength. I have learnt so much since that date, changed so much. I rest my head against you, letting, I hope, the gratitude haloing my mind bleed into your body, and feel, in return, sheltered from any storm. Not everything has changed.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Fiction
Dead Leaves. Top Story - October 2023.
It is not autumn itself that's the problem. No, I love autumn, with its energising climate after the alternating fug and disappointment of the English summer, its warm colours glowing in lowering sun, its iconography of harvest bounty and shenanigans in the borderlands between this world and the next. Potion brewing and tree hugging and pulling in to the nest, I have to say, it suits me well. Except. When I go to see the dentist, the smell of the waiting room makes me want to run. The airport feels only marginally less stifling than the plane, and the anticipation of a dreaded meeting is as unsettling as the meeting itself.
By Hannah Moore2 years ago in Confessions
