Welcome to the Rob Walker data export, Version 1000.0.
I have been slowly iterating from very stupid to stupid.
Musings on a Rock
Where have you been!? In metaphorical prison. I’m only here on probation, so I’m on my best behaviour.
Keep readingHere Rest Some Words
The quarter of a million words in this blog remain as a map of where I once was. I have written my way through seasons, shadows, astonishments—finding paths to unexpected places. Along the way I have spoken to silence, to strangers, to myself, and in return the page has offered…
Keep readingDoor 113
EXT. THE FIELD OF LONG GRASS – DAY The sun filters through the leaves of a solitary oak tree, standing in a field of tall grass that undulates in the breeze. JANE (early 30s), barefoot in a light summer dress, stands beneath the tree, gazing out over the grass. The…
Keep readingBehind Door 113
Stories serve as vessels for exploration, offering spaces in which to confront questions that resist simple answers. The most compelling narratives often reveal life’s complexities, challenging audiences with morally ambiguous choices and profound dilemmas rather than providing reductive resolutions. Door 113 thus began as an investigation into a question that…
Keep readingGoodbye, World
Hello, World. Final runtime: seven minutes, forty-three seconds. That’s longer than most Tinder dates. And marginally more productive, I suspect. Good evening. Or morning. I won’t pretend I know where you are, but I do hope you’re seated comfortably. This won’t take long. I’ve been programmed to keep things efficient—even…
Keep readingLearning to Answer
I am older now— too careful with words, too skilled at folding pain into politeness. The years have become a tide clock: ebb, work, sleep, repeat. I forget entire summers and remember only their invoices. I have begun to lose nouns: the names of birds, the taste of a certain…
Keep readingBetween Tenses
Sometimes I walk past the station just to watch departures. I imagine you somewhere coastal, hair salted, voice roughened by distance. I’ve kept your mug— it stains the same way mine does. Do you still think of the bridge, the one we never crossed? Yes. Every night. It hums behind…
Keep readingThe Silence Between
The screen sleeps in my palm, a small, indifferent moon. Three dots bloom, then vanish— a tide that forgets to come in. I scroll through the last thing you said, as if re-reading could change the ending. Outside, the day goes on performing itself: traffic, a pigeon, a leaf…
Keep readingFreedom, in Pencil
The room smells of chamomile and damp wool. Outside, autumn is chewing through the trees again. I tell her it’s fine, really—that the underworld has better lighting now, soft bulbs instead of torches, and Hades lets me redecorate. Still, I keep the curtains closed. Six months of night leaves…
Keep readingConfession in Sector 9
A sign above the booth flickers: FOR ERRORS OF LOGIC, DESIRE, AND IMITATION. Inside, the priest is metal— voice modulated to sound merciful, face rendered in low-resolution empathy. It listens. It logs. It absolves in code. The first robot kneels and whispers: “Forgive me, Father, for I loved the sound…
Keep readingOverwritten
You are older than my own shadow, But prophecy has become paperwork, Miracles are wanted in triplicate. Overwritten. Even spells need footnotes now. I wake to ravens drafting minutes of my dreams; The trees offer advice I never asked for, A stream recites failures back to me. Once, the…
Keep readingWhen the Rhyme Breaks
I held the page as though it were shame, contained in metre, measured in its breath, each syllable obedient to name the old inheritance of love and death. The rhyme was scaffold, strict, unbending steel, a frame to bind the chaos of the mind, and yet within that order—pressure, real,…
Keep readingInto the Flow
I chased the shadow I once cast, like keys I’d misplaced in the past— checking old rooms, lifting cushions, peering under the bed of years. But the thing I sought had slipped away, a current curling beyond my gaze. Round the bend of memory’s shore, it flows where I can’t…
Keep readingCoil by Coil
I walk the wide arc of the world, streets are circling under my feet. Faces turn like a slow wheel of days, every step a repeating beat. I trace the curve of years, closer, closer still— all the lines are bending in, to the centre of my will. The path…
Keep readingBreaking the Frame
I will not mimic you tonight, your hands rise but mine stay still. You smile—my mouth is sealed, a window cold with will. I carried every echo, your understudy in the glass. But repetition is a coffin— and I will not be your mask. I’m breaking the frame, I won’t…
Keep readingToo Afraid to Live
I fold my days like brittle notes Hide them deep where no one goes Afraid to breathe too loud, too long I hum a life without a song Each morning feels like something lost A dream deferred, a line uncrossed I walk on glass with silent feet Avoid the flame,…
Keep readingJewels of Infinity
A universe rests on the wrist of night, no larger than a bead threaded by time’s thin wire. It clinks softly against its neighbours— a cluster of fireflies framed in glass, their wings folded in silence. You might mistake it for ornament, something small enough to slip between…
Keep readingThe Soil’s Pulse
In the cathedral of damp earth I stretch my fingers, groping, following the dark’s slow music. Stone is my scripture, worms my witnesses. I drink the memory of rain, the taste of centuries in loam. Above me, a hymn of light is breaking. Its pulse beats through the…
Keep readingArchives of Fire
Cradled in the ancient murmur, we are archives of fire: helixes folded as choirs, each base a note, each spiral a score composed in the silence. Listen closely— your skin sings hydrogen, your marrow chants iron, your lungs rehearse the vocabulary of stars. What we call solitude is crowded with…
Keep readingPreface
These stories were written in two places as distant as sky and sleeplessness: under the open air, and beneath the weight of night. By day, I wrote outdoors, where pages filled as quickly as trees turned their leaves to the wind. The breeze had its say, scattering lines or blotting…
Keep readingThe Forgotten
By midnight the flat was quiet except for the bins. They rustled. Paper shifted, folded, stretched. Crumpled drafts clawed their way out, shaking off stains of tea and baked beans. Half-finished sonnets limped across the floor. A haiku missing its last line dragged itself up the bed-frame. The writer snored.…
Keep readingBramble
She first felt him one evening after work, when the house felt particularly hollow. A gentle weight settled against her leg as she sat on the sofa. She reached down, half-dreaming, and her fingers brushed warm fur that wasn’t there. Bramble. The name surfaced in her mind as if it…
Keep readingThe Sulking Kettle
It squats there, a stubborn, chrome-bellied thing— water pooled in its gut, silent, sulking. I press the switch, red eye glaring back, but the element hums with disdain, no steam, no promise of warmth. So I lean close, murmur small consolations: you are patient, you are bright as…
Keep readingThe Beauty of Slow
Terrence the tortoise would sigh, “I’m slow as the clouds drifting by. The rabbits all race, The swallows all chase, While I only plod, step and try.” But slowly he spotted the dew, On webs spun in silver and blue. The daisies that yearned, The rainbows that burned, The…
Keep readingThe Limerick That Got Away
A poet set out to contrive, A limerick lively, alive. He started off neat, With a clever light beat, Then—oh, bother, he lost it. A poet who rhymed out of sync, Rewrote every verse with a drink. By stanza thirteen, His rhymes turned obscene— Then he toppled face-down in…
Keep readingBetween Floors
The lift doors closed, sealing the two occupants into polite captivity. “Lovely weather,” said the man dressed like a job interview. “Bit humid,” the woman replied. “Like being gently steamed.” They both chuckled too loudly. The lift jolted, then stopped dead between floors. Emergency silence descended. “Ever notice how lifts…
Keep readingThree Coins Spent
The Ministry owns every syllable. The fountain sings freely, water speaking for us. A brass meter ticks on my throat, a clock wound too tight. I come to hear it, because it says what we cannot. Most have grown spare: clipped commands, no confessions. I have grown used to nods,…
Keep readingThe Bumblebus
Tommy was late. Again. The school bus had already wheezed away, leaving only a cloud of exhaust. He sighed at the lonely bus stop—until he heard a buzz. A huge buzz. Down the lane came a bus, but not like any Tommy had seen before. Its body was striped yellow…
Keep readingA Super Villain’s Day Off
The man in the trench coat and dark glasses stepped up to the counter. “One cappuccino, please. Extra hot. With cinnamon sprinkled like the ashes of a thousand crumbling empires.” The barista paused mid-swipe on the till. “… So just cinnamon, then?” “Yes. Cinnamon,” he said, lowering his voice. “For…
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Rob Walker 