Gary Rowlatt

Stories  ·  Essays  ·  Fiction  ·  Life Story Writing

52 pieces

“The now isn’t peaceful. It’s crushing.” · “I didn’t see it. Of course I didn’t see it.” · “I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand.” · “There’s a stretch of the Thames where the river bends, and the wind feels older than the land around it.” · “Not being good enough. Being invisible. That’s mine. Two fears, but really the same one wearing different clothes.” · “The light hadn’t gone anywhere. It just needed more batteries.” · “I was bent double, tears streaming onto the tarmac road. I cried like a child.” · “POP. That was my hamstring.” · “He made the ship inside it himself. Patience I never had.” · “I went outside today. Looked up at a sky so blue it felt like someone had washed it clean overnight.” · “The now isn’t peaceful. It’s crushing.” · “I didn’t see it. Of course I didn’t see it.” · “I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand.” · “There’s a stretch of the Thames where the river bends, and the wind feels older than the land around it.” · “Not being good enough. Being invisible. That’s mine. Two fears, but really the same one wearing different clothes.” · “The light hadn’t gone anywhere. It just needed more batteries.” · “I was bent double, tears streaming onto the tarmac road. I cried like a child.” · “POP. That was my hamstring.” · “He made the ship inside it himself. Patience I never had.” · “I went outside today. Looked up at a sky so blue it felt like someone had washed it clean overnight.” ·
Personal Essay · Featured

Forty Minutes on the Floor

A bad cut, a long wait, and the memories it dragged up

“I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand. It had to be red, I thought. Maybe that was a good thing, though.”

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About

I write short literary fiction, essays and memoir from Essex, on the Thames estuary. Most of it is about bodies under pressure, the things people carry without saying, and the moment someone works out what has actually happened to them. I also sit with people and write their life stories.

I started writing seriously in March 2026, after a chop saw took three tendons out of my hand and put me on the floor for ninety days. The early pieces explain themselves — they tell you what to feel, then check you felt it. The later ones don’t. Somewhere around The Mark and After Sticks I worked out that a chunk of coal in a tin, or a chewed baseball left on a dashboard, will carry more than any sentence I write about grief. The work below is roughly in the order I learned that.

PUBLISHED IN  ·  Pen With Paper  ·  Shaped Souls  ·  Runner’s Life  ·  The Silent Script  ·  The Shortform  ·  The Back Alley Press

The Last to Know  ·  a printed collection of thirteen flash fictions, 2026

Featured Works 10 pieces
Essay · Dementia
A House Full of Ghosts
A portrait of dementia in the language of tea, cake, and quiet devastation.
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Personal Essay
Forty Minutes on the Floor
I lay back on a cold, dusty concrete floor. My eyes darted to the red bath towel wrapped around my hand.
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Flash Fiction
Open
So, a bit of a funny story — I hit the OPEN button on what I thought was the toilet door.
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Personal Essay
The Boy Behind the Gate
When I think of myself as a child, a picture comes to mind. Actually, it's a real photograph. But it's ingrained.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
The Mark
Two scenes from The Lottery. The mark made in private. The stone thrown in public. After Shirley Jackson.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
After Sticks
Objects that hold a life inside them. After George Saunders.
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Flash Fiction · War
60 Seconds
The sixty seconds before the whistle blows. Not the charge — the waiting.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
I Died Alone
A silver ring in a ray of sunlight. An unopened present under a bed. A jigsaw with three pieces missing.
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Flash Fiction · Dark Comedy
Autopsy
A coroner talks himself through a post-mortem. The clock has stopped. The recorder isn’t running. He doesn’t notice.
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Flash Fiction · Literary
The Woman on the Astral Plane
Her eyes darted from one to the other as they passed by in a blur of colour and darkness. The dark ones she feared.
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The Ark
𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓄿 𓅓 𓆣 𓈖 𓊹 𓋴 𓆙 𓆑 𓇋 𓏺 𓐍 𓁹 𓃀 𓄡 𓅱 𓆤 𓇌 𓈙 𓉐 𓊃 𓋹 𓌙 𓍿 𓎛 𓏭 𓐝 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭 𓄿 𓅓 𓆣 𓈖 𓊹 𓋴 𓆙 𓆑 𓇋 𓏺 𓐍 𓁹 𓃀 𓄡 𓅱 𓆤 𓇌 𓈙 𓉐 𓊃 𓋹 𓌙 𓍿 𓎛 𓏭 𓐝 𓂀 𓇳 𓃭
𓂀
The Ark
Sacred texts. Key required.
Four legs. One name. She knew her way home.
Hissing Sid Collection
Hissing Sid
Something had shifted — that something was anxiety. I hate that word.
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Hissing Sid Collection
The Dash
The van before and now. Like the dash poem, there was so much story in between.
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Hissing Sid Collection
Scar Tissue
I don't want the hand injury to disappear. It's a loss.
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Hissing Sid Collection
The Bow
Writing as it comes out of your head is the gold treasure the Alchemist searched for.
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Hissing Sid Collection
Except
This is the first time in nine weeks I've been alone in a car.
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Hissing Sid Collection
Three Dots as a Pause
And when my fingers pause to think, I press full stop three times…
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Below the vault
☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM · ☠ · MEMENTO MORI · ✠ · REQUIESCAT IN PACE · † · IN MEMORIAM ·
☠
The Crypt
The hardest stories.
The ones not yet written.
Key required.
A sailor.
Not yet written
The Last Run
The run after the phone call. What the road looks like when your father has just died.
Not yet written
What I Didn't Say
The conversation that never happened. The one that couldn't, by the end.
Not yet written
The Hospice Room
A chair by a bed. Someone else's story. My hands. The silence between words.
Not yet written
Still Dancing
Personal. Angry in places. Honest throughout. No neat resolution.

Every life has a story worth telling.  I can help you tell yours.

I sit with people — in their homes, over a cup of tea — and draw out the stories they've been carrying for years. The ones that haven't been written down. The ones that matter most. Then I write them, in their voice, the way they'd want to be remembered.

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