Kayleigh Jayshree
My landlord emailed me a month ago and told me
about the dream he’d had. He said he was in charge
of all the houses in South East England. He had
thousands of emails to answer and could not hire
an estate agent. None of the houses had mould. The
prices kept going down because of the government.
He was afraid he would leave an email unanswered
and someone would show up outside his door. He
was afraid that one email could change his life or
his fortunes. Every time he answered an email one
more would pop up. If he deleted the email without
reading it, ten would emerge. Or worse: a phone call.
He’d been afraid of phone calls since he was a young
child. My landlord emailed me yesterday and told me
he was humiliated in his office as the estate agent
told a story about going swimming in the summer.
He’d never learned to swim. In that moment he could
not say anything. What kind of man doesn’t know how
to swim? What kind of man has never tried at least once?
He went to Waitrose to buy his monthly shop and was
confronted by a swimming lessons advert and how it
was aimed for people ages 3-13. He wasn’t 3-13. But he
needed the lessons, arguably more than a three-year-old did.
He hadn’t been three for a long time.
Kayleigh Jayshree is a poet, critic and fiction writer based in London. Her reviews have been published with PN Review, Poetry Book Society, The North and others. Her poems have been published with Propel, berlin lit, Butcher’s Dog and others. Her debut pamphlet, mango & starblush, was published by fourteen poems in 2025.
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