If Val could’ve been anyone, she would’ve been Anya. On the first day Val met her, seated next to each other by luck of the alphabet—Langford, then Liu—Anya had shaken her hand. It was a firm grip, one of old money and future expectations. Val had squirmed in her second-hand uniform and hoped that Anya…
Newly solo at 30, I move into a one-bedroom unit. There’s a connecting wall with another apartment. First night I notice it, then it continues on and on, the neighbour’s radio is on 24/7. Finally, I knock on their door to complain. A woman, maybe 20 or 22, invites me in to apologise. She’s in…
You start the car and drive slowly, carefully. It is something-very-late-o’clock, you think. But, she is pregnant, and she needs—she says she needs—ice cream and pickled beetroot. You’re tired, but you’re a good person, you think, and anyway, when the baby is here, this time of day will be normal, won’t it? There is a…
Nadia sips her coffee and gazes out at the steely grey morning. She glances at her phone one last, depressing time. ‘Wildfires in Rhodes as well,’ she says. ‘Dubrovnik. Southern Italy. Northern Algeria. The whole Mediterranean is on fire.’ Across the table, Lloyd shakes his head, pushes the sleeves of his faded sweatshirt above…
1 Down South Lane, tucked away behind Oxford Street, was Jenny’s memory parlour. A remorseless stream of traffic cut through Levin down State Highway 1, beating it into place — lest it slink off when no-one was looking. Few of these travellers ever made it the short hop over to South Lane, though. As the…
Sometimes it seemed as if Eugene was bigger than his body. When he swept his wings past the shelves in the lounge, books fell to the floor and startled him. When he chuff-chuffed around the dining table, his foot caught on a chair leg and sent him sprawling. Sometimes, burning round the racetrack from the…
The first time she slipped into your mouth, she was passing you a plum stone to swallow. Only after she’d stripped the flesh, of course. Fingertips on your tongue, tilt your head back and swallow. You have to remember, she’d said as though she had any idea how it felt, it’s always easier to get…
Cleaning day on the 115th. From the observation window the crickets look like brown beads. Two farmers shake them from their old containers and they crawl over each other to get the grain, grown under lamps upstairs and scattered in fresh, clean boxes. I press my ear to the observation window, hoping to hear their…
It was only February, night flowers still out, that she’d last pushed into trainers that didn’t need lacing. Escape had meant running from the neighbourhood of packed-in, tucked-up houses and bowed street lights. Past the dairy, the bus stops, well past any capacity she had imagined until, hours later, the yolk of morning broke on…
[Content warning: maternal mental health] It’s been so many years, now, that sometimes Gina doesn’t fully clock what month it is, until the dream returns. It cycles back like a weather pattern, a relapse. In the dream, she has left a small baby out on a summery back lawn. The daisy-starred grass soon swoops with…