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Contributing Writer Storytelling & Travel Writing

Tom Bretherton

Tom Bretherton has spent the better part of two decades travelling, and the better part of that time paying attention. He has contributed to Light & Composition since 2014 with a writer's instinct for the particular — the name of a town, the timing of a conversation, the kind of detail that makes a story feel true. His Reflections are brief narratives that arrive at something universal by way of somewhere very specific.

621 Published Reflections

Reflections by Tom Bretherton

Showing 12 of 621 essays
The Silence of the Storm Photo of the Day
October 5, 2018

The Silence of the Storm

I remember sitting in a small cafe in Rajshahi when the sky simply gave up. It wasn’t a gentle shower; it was a wall of grey that turned the streets into rivers and sent everyone scurrying for cover. For an hour, the city—usually a frantic symphony of bells, shouting, and engines—went completely mute. I watched […]
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The Weight of One Choice Photo of the Day
September 30, 2018

The Weight of One Choice

I once spent a week in a small village in the Pyrenees with nothing but a notebook and a single pen. I had intended to bring a full kit of supplies, but in the rush of departure, I left the rest behind. At first, the limitation felt like a cage. I found myself staring at […]
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The Architecture of Small Things Photo of the Day
September 13, 2018

The Architecture of Small Things

I remember walking through a neglected alleyway in Kyoto with an old botanist named Kenji. He stopped abruptly, pointing his cane at a patch of weeds pushing through the cracked asphalt. He didn’t see a nuisance; he saw a map of resilience. We spent twenty minutes crouched there, tracing the veins of a leaf that […]
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The Weight of Yesterday Photo of the Day
September 10, 2018

The Weight of Yesterday

I remember walking through the backstreets of George Town with an old man named Mr. Tan. He pointed to a crumbling shophouse, its paint peeling like sunburned skin, and told me he had been born in the room above the kitchen. Beside it, a glass-and-steel tower was rising, its crane hovering like a giant insect […]
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Echoes in the Stone Photo of the Day
September 6, 2018

Echoes in the Stone

I remember sitting on the steps of a library in Florence, watching a group of schoolboys chase a stray cat across the piazza. They were loud, messy, and entirely indifferent to the centuries of marble and history towering above them. It struck me then that we often treat our most sacred spaces as if they […]
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The Sweetness of Now Photo of the Day
September 5, 2018

The Sweetness of Now

I remember sitting on a low stone wall in a village outside of Lucca, watching a young boy struggle with a slice of watermelon that was far too large for his hands. He wasn’t worried about the juice staining his shirt or the sticky mess on his chin. He was entirely consumed by the task […]
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The Patience of Petals Photo of the Day
September 4, 2018

The Patience of Petals

I remember sitting on a wooden bench in a garden in Kyoto, watching an elderly woman tend to a single bush for nearly an hour. She wasn’t pruning or clearing away debris; she was simply adjusting the way a cluster of flowers caught the light. When I asked her why she spent so much time […]
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The Quiet Language of Petals Photo of the Day
September 2, 2018

The Quiet Language of Petals

My grandmother kept a garden in the back of her house in Kent, a small patch of earth that seemed to hold more secrets than the rest of the world combined. She used to say that if you watched a flower long enough, it would eventually tell you exactly what it needed. I spent many […]
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The Weight of Water Photo of the Day
August 11, 2018

The Weight of Water

I remember a summer in a small town where the heat felt like a physical weight, pressing down on the tin roofs until the air shimmered and hummed. We were children then, and the only thing that mattered was the sudden, sharp shock of cold water against skin. My friend Elias had a rusted pump […]
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The Weight of the Years Photo of the Day
August 4, 2018

The Weight of the Years

I once sat with a woman in a village in the high mountains of Georgia who had spent her entire life in the same stone house. Her hands were mapped with deep, dark lines, and when she poured tea, she didn’t look at the cup; she looked through the window at the slope of the […]
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The Weight of Time Photo of the Day
July 28, 2018

The Weight of Time

I remember sitting in a small cafe in Luang Prabang, watching an old man repair a stone fence near the river. He didn’t use mortar or modern tools; he just fit the rocks together by feel, as if they were pieces of a puzzle he had been solving for decades. He told me that a […]
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The Weight of a Gaze Photo of the Day
July 25, 2018

The Weight of a Gaze

I remember sitting in a small tea shop in Leh, watching a young boy lean against a weathered wooden pillar. He wasn’t doing anything in particular—just holding a plastic cup and watching the dust motes dance in a shaft of afternoon light. He had that look, the one that belongs only to children: a total, […]
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