Reposted by Matt FlintoffMe @ewiggins66.bsky.social · 08/10/2026#vss365 Granny said It was a #sin To not use the talents You were born with But I was born To be a witch The church Tortures witches Stones Drowns Burns them at the stake She said it was okay They did the same To scientists Teachers Doctors And artists So there was nothing Special about a witch 2307
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 07/10/2026When the last of Funafuti was consumed by the sea, the government kept the #island running on a server in Auckland. Each Saturday Grandmother puts on the headset and sweeps our family graves. Even the tides are coded in, she says. #vss365 0213
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 06/10/2026At Moynaq the trawlers sit in sand, the sea a day's drive off. Each spring, Rustam's grandfather bends a patched #sail onto the one mast still standing. Cotton took the water, he says, cotton can fetch it back. This morning the canvas hangs sodden and dripping brine into the dust. #vss365 0203
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 05/10/2026When the eye of the #hurricane crossed Barbuda, frigatebirds dropped from the blue in hundreds, too tired to fear us. Among them walked Celestine, calling the names of the drowned. Her husband had sailed out under skies as those. One old bird rested at her feet, and let her carry it inside. #vss365 0212
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 02/10/2026What the maps call the #mountain is a knee. The range beyond is the shin, under ice, and the plain the city stands on is the thigh. Nobody has gone north far enough to find the rest. It lies on its side. Each spring the snow slides off earlier, the way a blanket slips when a sleeper shifts. #vss365 0214
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 01/10/2026static.klipy.comRich Benoit: This Is Real FarmingALT: Rich Benoit: This Is Real Farming 010
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Our daughter Lily, four, has a #cloud she keeps. It followed the car home from Blackpool in June. It sits over the house now and it only rains on the garden, at night. Dad has a lawn he's proud of. He’s not moaned about the weather since, and he’s stopped going on about the hosepipe ban. #vss365 0273
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Mr Hale left his allotment to our Sam, who is nine. It's in the will, a proper #bequest, with the shed. Sam took it seriously. He's up there before school with the old man's fork, which is taller than him. The other plot-holders have stopped laughing. His leeks took first at the show. #vss365 2253
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 29/09/2026The dog heard 'vet' and went limp with dread. Then, ‘Actually, they're closed on Mondays.' A #reprieve! He celebrated by eating a sock, thereby guaranteeing Tuesday's appointment. #vss365 0233
Reposted by Matt FlintoffAuthor Robert C. Madison @robertcmadison.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Garden #reprieve. Resting against a thick birch, its soft, peeling #bark like tattered pages of a favorite book. Sun dappled upon the countless #plants like old friends. On the soft breeze floats the perfume of the #flowers, as if they're saying, "It'll be alright." #vss365 #vssdaily #BookishTues 1245
Reposted by Matt FlintoffGréachán @greachan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026In you is the purity of deep water. #vss365 232351
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Grandad spent all spring trying to #purify the pond for Nan's frogs. He hates frogs. Can't be in a room with one. In May the first spawn came and he rang the ward and held the phone out over the water so she could hear it. The croaks were too faint, but held it there a good while anyway. #vss365 0281
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Dad gave something up every Lent and swore to the priest he'd #renounce it for good. The smokes one year, the bookies the next. By Easter Monday he'd be back at both. After he turned eighty the priest asked what it would be this time. Dad said Lent, and he’s kept to it. #vss365 0504
Reposted by Matt FlintoffSanya @sanjar.bsky.social · 27/09/2026late September #wind even the reddest petal must #renounce the stem #HaikuDailyPrompt #vss365 #haiku #blueskypoets #PoetryInPictures #nature #garden #flowers #photography 54714
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 26/09/2026The rewilding wolves came with strict instructions. #nurture, don’t tame. Mel Tarn, on the fell above Dunsop, never fed or named them, but she did watch them grow. The pack lies out on her lane at dusk, watching her now. Her lambs are the only ones in the valley that sleep easy. #vss365 1222
Reposted by Matt FlintoffJenny @jennyww.bsky.social · 25/09/2026"I #reckon it'll take an hour," he said looking at her. She furrowed her brow. "Do you think it'll take longer?" She howled. Then he howled back. The werewolf potion worked faster than he had expected. #vss365 #writing #stories 1238
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 25/09/2026They’d quarried Cald Fell since 1802. Each March the clerks #reckon up with tonnage out, royalties paid, all square. This year a second ledger, on cut vellum, appeared in the stone. It tallied the same 224 years from the other side. The last column was headed OWED. The units weren’t tonnes. #vss365 0192
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Vat meat ended #hunger in 2058. Gran said it tasted of nothing because nothing wanted to eat it. She kept two hens in a wardrobe, illegally, and fed us eggs at dawn with the curtains shut. I still can't eat one in daylight. My kids think it's something you can only do at Christmas. #vss365 2275
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Bentham had staged its #Passion every Good Friday since 1631, same script, same hill. The cross was cut fresh yearly from Cadley Woods. In 1998 the woods were cleared for timber, so they used the last tree. Every Easter since, up on the hill, it sprouts, nails and all. Nobody dares move it. #vss365 0272
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Dad's retirement card said it was time to #embark on a new chapter. He read it aloud, announcing it to the whole family. Then he bought a boat. It lives on the lawn, forty miles from the sea, and every Sunday he sits in it with a flask and the shipping forecast, happier than I've seen him. #vss365 2355
Reposted by Matt FlintoffAli @alibutterfly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026#vss365 #poetry #bravewrite Her smile feigns light, but she is #stormy, fury coiled; swirling, seething. Resentment gathers as darkness returns him to them— his wife, his child— as though they were the trespassers, and she the one displaced. Grey eyes, silent, shrieking. 0225
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Every #storm since 1820 left something on Heysham sands. A bell here, a piano there. The Braids log it. Monday's left a door, upright on the tideline, locked. Meg Braid's house key turned it. Behind was her own hall, waist-deep in green water, barnacles on the radiators. She logged that too. #vss365 2235
Reposted by Matt FlintoffYourMoonliness @yourmoonliness.bsky.social · 20/09/2026little conflicts at the birdfeeder sunday morning rush #vss365 #conflict #senyrusunday 1357
Reposted by Matt Flintoffthpossiblepoet.bsky.social @thpossiblepoet.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Eternal conflict Staining all humanity The trees bear witness #tHartigan #haiku #vss365 #conflict 0133
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 20/09/2026My calendar flagged a #conflict. Two entries for Monday, 3pm. One was mine, collect Ellie from school. The other was also mine, the app insisted, created from my account on 4 May 2049. It said: Be late. Let her walk. I've read it forty times. It's Sunday night. #vss365 1234
Reposted by Matt FlintoffFizzytwizlerAllsortsOfAllsorts @fizzytwizler.bsky.social · 19/09/2026#vss365 Fate descends Along the silver threads Of a nightfall so opaque Bigger than the whole sky As all our dreams Make hearts skip jump Under and over Rainbows of #marvel Breaking into Dawn Shadows jealous Cling to the cobwebs Of a mind blind in love shrouded by doubt #poetry 48823
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 19/09/2026The brochure called the dam a #marvel of the age. It drowned Ashworth in 1936: forty houses, a chapel, a school. Joan Pye was the last child on the register. Every dry summer, when the spire shows, she takes the book up to the waterline, calls the names, and waits. #vss365 1201
Reposted by Matt FlintoffWayfarer @wayfarer.chat · 19/09/2026We rode in armor to #explore: our bathyspheres and starships proof against the elements and stranger things. Behind, lay lies curling in our wake, growing, eclipsing our nobler pursuits. If we pushed ever faster, ever onward, ever higher-- it was because we could never return home again. #vss365 0273
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 18/09/2026After the stroke, Grandad began to #explore the house each morning like a guest. He admired the barometer. He asked who the woman in the photographs was. Gran told him, every day, and every day he studied her a while and said, "She looks kind. I hope he deserved her." #vss365 1275
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Claim form, section 4: list any injuries you did #sustain in the flood. None, he wrote. Section 5, losses: the house, the dog, the piano. Section 6, dependants. He held the pen for a long while, then longer still. The river meandered past the window, wide and dark and almost silent. #vss365 0193
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Peat cutting on Withnell Moss will #commence 1 May. Cutters are reminded: dig no deeper than six feet. Should you find a hand, replace the turf and move one yard east. Should the hand be warm and moving, the season is closed. By order of the Commoners, as every year since 1702. #vss365 0182
Reposted by Matt FlintoffThe Belfast Review @thebelfastreview.bsky.social · 08/07/2026We’re busy assembling the new issue but wanted to shout about our contributors. Check out these amazing names. Can’t wait to share their brilliant work, as well! New issue drops 31 July - available in print & digital on our website. #followus for more updates #writingcommunity 092
Reposted by Matt FlintoffREMAINS @remainsmagazine.bsky.social · 23/07/2026Remains issue 5 is mailing out now. New fiction by Tim Lees, Matt Flintoff, Aliya Whiteley, David Vonderheide, Rebecca Zahabi, Ray Cluley, Toby Whithouse, plus James Sallis and colour art by Richard Wagner.remains.ukIssue 5NEW! 100 full colour pages of brand new fiction, with art by Richard Wagner fictionSex Lives of the Spirit World by Tim LeesTributary by Matt FlintoffSandcastle Chalet by Aliya WhiteleyInsights by Dav... 01510
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 25/07/2026Thank you for the publish @remainsmagazine.bsky.social !! 050
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 04/05/2026She still showed him #affection. A hand on his cheek in the dark. Fingers through his hair as he slept. He hadn't told anyone she was dead. After all, if he did, her touches might stop. #vss365 0163
Matt Flintoff @flintyflop.bsky.social · 03/05/2026Thank you for the publish, @crypticfrogpub.bsky.social !! 💙 110
Reposted by Matt FlintoffCryptic Frog @crypticfrogpub.bsky.social · 02/05/2026The Dome protects the village. The Maintainers take care of the Dome. But how the Dome works and why it is there is a mystery to everyone in Matt Flintoff's "Maintainer" (Sci-Fi). Continue reading at crypticfrogpublishing.wordpress.com/2026/05/01/i.... 231
