Hammock Snapshots are short flash fiction pieces, accompanied by an original illustration that aim to capture a moment, a feeling or a fragment of something without the pressures of longform writing. The series began on Instagram and now also features on our site.

When you return to a place or person you haven’t seen in years, you realise sometimes how drastically the person the things that define you change, how much of life can only be understood in retrospect. 

It is shocking sometimes to actually realise that the enthusiastic twelve year old or the insecure fifteen or the rebellious eighteen and existential twenty one year old are all the same person, moving through time and becoming unrecognisable, affected by various life stages, people, continents, incidents. You construct who you are from these stages and these memories, trying to hold on to family or people, to certain values or preferences or routines, but everything else is in perpetual motion, as though you are standing at a bridge watching the cars continuously drive by on a highway below. 

Or perhaps you’re on the highway, driving forward, changing lanes, occasionally aligning but never really on the same journey, never entirely sure of anyone’s destination.