Above Water 2023

CREATIVE WRITING & ART ANTHOLOGY

ABOVE WATER

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY We acknowledge that the 2023 Above Water anthology was created on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to the True Custodians of these lands and their elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

ABOVE WATER VOLUME 19

Above Water is the annual creative writing and art competition produced by the Media and Creative Arts departments of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). This year we received over 100 entries of creative writing and art which were blinded and reviewed by the 2023 Above Water Editorial Team to compile a shortlist. The shortlist was then presented to a panel of external judges.

This year’s judges are Kolkata-bred, Naarm-based poet, educator, and political organiser Srishtee Chatterjee (they/he), multidisciplinary Queer artist and anthropologist Nika Davydova (she/her) and award-winning interdisciplinary Naarm artist Kaijern Koo (she/her).

This anthology is a celebration of the creativity of our top writers and artists across the University of Melbourne. We hope you enjoy your dive into the pages of our 2023 Above Water.

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Cover Lihini Gamage Design Weiting Chen Illustration Team Ashlea Banon Duy D Emma Bui Harriet Chard Jacques CA Jessica Norton Jocelyn Manyu Wang Thao Duyen ( Jennifer) Nguyen Tina Tao Editorial Team Carmen Chin Josh Davis Weiting Chen Xiaole Zhan Editorial Assistant Stephen Zavitsanos Judges Kaijern Koo Kolkata-bred Nika Davydova Nika Davydova Srishtee Chatterjee Shortlisted Writers A. M. Bueman Akanksha Agarwal Alice Daye Anisha de Silva Claire Le Blond Eleanore Arnold-Moore Felicity Smith

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Francesca Abrahams Gabrielle Lim Hannah Doyle Imogen McGindle Isabel Greenslade Joanne Zou Ledya Khamou Luca Saunders Michelle Yu Noa Shenker Remi Lequevre-Akker Star Clarke Verity Pascarl Wildes Lawler Xiaoyu Kang Yiqing Lu Shortlisted Artists Alison (Ali) Richardson Duy Dang Elissa Sadgrove Gunjan Ahluwalia Helena Pantsis Imogen McGindle Le Anh Tho Nguyen (Mary Nguyen) Writing Winners Best Writing — Yiqing Lu, Day of Death Best Poetry — Verity Pascarl, Pretty Terrible View Highly Commended Writing Gabrielle Lim, Sun-kissed Hannah Maryam, The Bucket Art Winner

Ruisi Wang, In Between Highly Commended Art Elissa Sadgrove, Limessy Series

©2023 University of Melbourne Student Union. Published by the General Secretary of UMSU, Disha Zutshi.

The copyright of materials published in Above Water remains with the individual writers and artists and shall not be reproduced without their permission. The UMSU Media and UMSU Creative Arts departments reserve the right to republish these works in any format. ISSN 1833-8879

Illustration by Lihini Gamage

CONTENTS WRITTEN

VISUAL

08

Day of Death Yiqing Lu

46

04

In Between Ruisi Wang

13

Pretty Terrible View Verity Pascarl

Summer before graduation Ledya Khamou

47

20

ILimessy Series Elissa Sadgrove

14

Sun-kissed Gabrielle Lim

ode to the booger Annabelle McKenzie Bueman

48

another dimension Joanne Zou

21

Untitled Imogen McGindle

49

Morning After Noa Shenker

32

Stay Helena Pantsis

57

Sinking Hortus Conclusus the lone traveller Duy Dang

60

Diatoms 1 Dinoflagellates 1 Opal dreaming 1 Alison (Ali) Richardson

e e e

15

The Bucket Hannah Maryam

22

Linguistic Immigrant Ledya Khamou

25

Barbie Girls Francesca Abrahams

29

OCEAN Imogen McGindle

30

Made up Alice Daye

e e e

33 34

e

English Breakfast Isabel Greenslade 81st Overall Luca Saunders

Why does home taste so good? e e e Michelle Yu 38 39

e

40 41

e

42

e

44

e

45

e

Phosphenes Eleanore Arnold-Moore

e e e

53

Laika of Sputnik 2 Wildes Lawler

54

Exposé from a Tooth in a Mouth, by a Second Premolar Remi Lequevre-Akker

e

ee

62

Our Paradise (我们的天堂) Felicity Yiran Smith

64

see for yourself Anisha de Silva

67

e

What Vincent van Gogh Didn’t Paint Xiaoyu Kang

72

Thank You Above Water Team

e e

e

e e e e e

e e

68

The Headless Man Gunjan Ahluwalia

70

Intertwine Gold Sea Oil Spill over Night Sky Mary Nguyen

e e

Glass Clown Star Clarke

Night Terrors Star Clarke

proof Claire Le Blond

Spring flight Akanksha Agarwal Everyday boxes Akanksha Agarwal

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WINNER

4

WINNER

‘In Between’

by Ruisi Wang

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WINNER

6

WINNER

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WINNER

Day of Death

by Yiqing Lu

6:34 AM

The dog grins at me. Through layers of pixie glass and resin it hangs slack-jawed and manytoothed and empty-eyed and grinning.

I’m still bleary-eyed. The bell tolls which I set as my alarm cuts through my dreams. Outside the sky seemed a sickly grey. I rub at them. The grin seemed to have burnt itself on the inside of my eyelids.

Well.

The dog wasn’t the exception. Everyone in the photo is grinning. All a self-satisfied smile. A family standing around a countertop where a grotesquery sat.

The caption reads:

Encasing a loved one in acrylic resin.

And.

A great Father’s Day Gift.

7:01 AM

The worst thing about it is that it still seems alive. Just frozen. Captured in a moment of love like a creation of Midas.

I imagine the taxidermist’s fingers digging into the dog’s fur. I imagine their hands holding its

jaws in place. I imagine them putting marble in place of the eyes. I imagine the discarded eyes of the dog on the clinical table next to them. Blinking. Blinking.

Blinking.

I feel sick. But only faintly.

Wouldn’t it decay?

8:49 AM

They say that Walt Disney’s head is frozen somewhere on Disney property.

Cryogenics. The fetishistic fantasies of some fervent fanatic. Dusk dreams of the mad scientist.

His face encased in a block of ice shaved to Micky Mouse’s effigy and stored underneath the

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WINNER happiest place on earth.

It makes him sound like a saint. Almost. Three days and three nights.

Only.

They’re waiting for the right moment to revive him. They say. And I couldn’t think of a single damn reason why.

Where would they even put the dog?

9:37 AM

On the countertop it seems to take up too much space. Its presence dominates the room. Making the airy and sunny kitchen feel suddenly oppressive.

Maybe it is like. An altar.

Like the idol of a god. Immortalised. Until time immemorial.

Below someone commented:

I’d do the same thing. I just can’t find the storage space.

10:04 AM

Your grandpa is dead.

What. Really?

No. Not really. But he’s close to it.

Oh.

He’s had a heart attack. They’re resuscitating him in the ICU. Oh.

We’ve decided to give up on treatment.

Oh. Why.

Because it will be kinder to him that way.

Are we going to see him one last time.

No. The plane tickets are too expensive.

Oh.

That’s a shame.

Yeah. There is no more time.

11:11 AM

Google says they’re deleting accounts with two years of inactivity.

There are people who have died for just as long. Sometimes I scroll through the accounts whose owners have long since passed. Buried. In the ground. But they tweet like they’re still there.

I make idols out of their words. Mundane quips and snarky comments thrown at each other

became its chiselled marble and stone. The Bible says idolatry is a sin but the bible make idols

of dead men all the same. This digital graveyard is the halls of Nirvana. Cancer. Suicide. Murder.

Rapture. It can’t really derail immortality.

They should print them out at least. Preserve them somewhere in a vault. Surrounded by ice. Or resin.

Illustration by Jacques CA

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WINNER The formula to godhood probably lies somewhere in an account that hasn’t posted in two years.

Another question about the dog.

12:04 PM

Jesus.

I can’t stop thinking about it. When I close my eyes it replaces the darkness. When I blink it almost seemed to materialise in front of me.

How old was the dog?

Anyways. It couldn’t have been that old. From the picture it seems crisp. Almost. Like it was at the prime of its life.

I can’t really discern animal age but I try. They say one human year is seven dog years. Was the dog 70? Maybe. Or 80. Or 90.

I can’t remember how old my grandpa is.

Goddamit.

Was.

1:16 PM

I know cryogenics is impossible. But I want to try.

Freezing someone in place forever. Or for as long as we’d like. It is a fight against time itself.

Turn back the clocks. Or stop it in its tracks.

In my living room the Google Nest is displaying a carousal of pictures. It lingers at one. My grandpa. 40. 50 years ago. He smiles at the camera. Everyone smiles with him.

Capturing him at that moment.

Time stopping in the frame of a second.

His body encased in ice or acrylic resin.

I don’t think I have the storage space for it.

My grandpa died.

2:47 PM

Jesus. Really?

I mean. Not yet.

That’s good. Right?

No. Not really. My parents are giving up on treatment.

That’s…I mean…I’m sorry.

It’s okay. I haven’t seen him in years.

Oh. Right.

I don’t even feel that much.

Right.

3:37 PM

It’s hard to feel death when you don’t really know them.

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WINNER I search my mind for memories of my grandpa. He’s so blurry. Like his face turns away from me every time I try to reconstruct it.

There are three pictures of him on my phone. He is facing away in each of them. A silhouette. A stranger.

Fuck.

4:44 PM

The clock stops at 444. I can’t help but hiss the numbers. Pressing my tongue flat and pushing the numbers through my teeth. It sounds like death.

On my birthday they used to go down to sweep the family graves. Old headstones where the

carved words have long since faded. They burn paper money and paper mansions and little paper effigies to their names. Burned incense so the paper riches may travel down to the city of ghosts.

I pointed my pudgy fingers at the headstones and asked who they are.

The adults shook their heads. As if it was a mystery I was not yet fit to understand.

They don’t remember either.

5:58 PM

My dad’s eyes look red-rimmed on the dinner table. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him cry.

I want to cry. But it feels kind of hollow. I haven’t seen him in. At least seven years. I want to recall the last time I even talked to him. A month ago? Or a year ago.

Whatever.

Something catches the corner of my eye.

On the kitchen countertop. Clear as day. My grandpa’s head. Encased in a block of resin.

He looks more alive than he’s ever been.

6:12 PM

In the other room I can hear my grandma’s voice through the phone. She’s saying something.

Maybe she’s crying. I don’t know. The connection isn’t that clear. Everything is crackling.

In front of me he is grinning. I can count each wrinkle and each fold of his skin. His eyes

crinkled. His smile serene. He looks just like the photographs. Just like the blurry images in my

mind of his face at the other side of the room. Beside me under a canopy of trees as we acted out the tortoise and the hare. Captured forever. Midas’s touch.

7:28 PM

I take him back upstairs. My room was already crowded. But with him there it feels like a cage.

Not a rat cage though. The room feels like a cage in the same way a cathedral feels like a cage.

His silent presence dominates everything. It presses against my skin like storm clouds. All humid and moist and volatile. This is the most alive he’s ever been.

I run my finger down the side of his face. Through resin or ice. It is so cold that it hurts.

We can’t really afford to go to the funeral.

8:52 PM

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WINNER His body is across an ocean and then some. It’s two thousand dollars worth of plane tickets

away. And then some. He’s hooked on tubes somewhere. Or lying in a cold morgue. And he will be lowered to the ground or into the furnace whilst staring sightless into the faces of strangers.

I light a candle.

On my desk. His head is preserved in perfection.

They won’t resurrect Walt Disney.

9:18 PM

His head hangs like Christ on the cross. On the walls and behind screens and beyond rows and

rows of melting candle wax. They kneel at his behest. They read out his Wikipedia page like it is a holy text.

There is a god in there somewhere.

It can’t be easy for you.

10:45 PM

I don’t mind.

It’s okay. Denial comes first.

No. Really. It’s fine. I told you. I haven’t seen him in years. I barely remember him.

Well. Are you going for the funeral?

No. Oh.

I’m sorry.

Don’t. …

Thanks.

11:59 PM

I don’t sleep. I sit and watch the frozen head instead. I try to write down as many stories about him as I could remember. But nothing comes to mind.

The dog’s grin stops in the infinite stretch between one second and the next. Press pause on the clocks. Everyone smiles with it. The photo is proof enough that the dog will live forever.

My grandpa’s head sits on my desk. By morning it will be gone. I try to write down my memories of him. I could only manage blurry recollections.

We acted out the hare and the tortoise under canopies.

And.

He taught me how to play chess on a board that is a sheet of clear plastic.

And.

He says I love you with a staticky voice. And smiles at me with his face mosaiced on a screen.

There is a god in there somewhere.

Probably.

12

12:00 AM

WINNER Content Warning: Gaslighting, emotional abuse, sexual harassment/abuse, depression

Pretty Terrible View.

by Verity Pascarl

A man sits on the train watching me No, fuck that, he’s staring There’s a glint in his eye, might be glee Then again it’s something steely Like he’s opaque and i can’t see clearly I move, he moves I turn, he turns I look away, he… looks more closely I pass by him And see the white mess The hand down his pants And, look, I must confess I almost cry But I’m used to this by now It’s a familiar disgust A survivable must Hope at last as the PSO’s get on board I go to ask for help But out comes the machine connected by cord “Just need to see your Myki” the officer grunts If cops are pigs, then these are the runts I get booked Couple hundred dollars The man watching looks on, hooked He gets a nod and a “gday” I’m the entertainment But still it’s me who has to pay.

Illustration by Weiting Chen

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COMMENDED

Content Warning: References to bruising and death

Sun-kissed

by Gabrielle Lim

The wolf’s supper picks itself up from the ground

the planet is a tangerine in the pocket of my cardigan; I plucked it

& feasts. Farewell to feeling too big for my body, a funeral dirge

myself, grew it in my garden. Watch me lick the syrup from my fingertips

for the plummy bootprints pressed into my ribs

swallow it whole. It’s nothing new: I used these hands to cleave the solar

the panopticon of shame, the home I made for us inside my head. Yes,

system to fruit salad & take a slice of the sun. I carry

I clawed down the walls, called it survival. You told them you left me for dead, but I taught myself to turn a period into a comma & keep these lungs breathing. They say it’s a man’s world yet the truth is

the light inside of me, weave the dawn into my braid, dance through the seawaves in dapples, make the shadows say surrender. Know that summer follows me wherever I go, so I’ll never hunger again.

Illustration by Emma Bui

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COMMENDED

The Bucket

by Hannah Maryam

From an early age, an imaginary bucket was carefully balanced on my head. Slowly— slow enough that I would forget its existence—unknown words would land, plucked from the heavenly clouds that congregated over distant islands, as thick as cotton, before falling far from their lofty heights.

Dripping in slow droplets, beading and then falling under their own weight like sea pippies dropping into a pail one by one, sifting easily in my hand as I inspect them before falling, each note ringing with the sound of plink,

plink,

plink—

—kampong

plops into my bucket loudly as early as four years old. It is what nenek and I draw on sheets of white paper, sitting at my little table after kindergarten; broad strokes of markers and pencils for the palm trees, the wooden stilts, the pot plants, slats, roofs, planks to keep out the rain and wind. I am too young to know that there used to be many of these, before Kallang River was hemmed in; when the Illustration by Weiting Chen

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COMMENDED breeze used to filter through the trees; when women wore kebayas and descended down the steps of landed houses; when roads fell silent in the evening and crickets took over, wooden slats creaking. I am too young to know the sound of it, that nenek’s kampong was one of many, sprouting on the roadside, carved into the unruly jungle. And yet, even now, I can still draw it all from

memory—

—burung always wake me up on my first day back in Singapore. My eyes peel open, lying on my back in nenek and datok’s guest room. It is the sound of a different land but slowly, I come to know them. Their shy little calls are a symphony. The dust in the guest bedroom makes my throat itch. Outside, the distant sound of traffic crashes in waves. It is my first day back in Singapore and the first thing I choose to do is lie awake and listen to the burung. Furtive in their song, they are the best kept secret of Singapore—

—bunga are the flowers that soon grow again, amongst the rubble and dust, the sound of battle still ringing in tremors. Say it out loud, so you can feel the word bloom in your mouth, so full in its beauty, like bundle, like basket, like bouquet. Say bunga and I am crossing the road with my mum to reach the flower market. It is Raya and we are visiting nenek and datok only for a week and mum wants to get flowers for their house.

Say bunga one more time so I can feel the air thick with the perspiration of plants, people and car exhaust. We have just reached Caldecott station. My arms are already aching from carrying the flowers, but I hold them closer, as close as I can without crushing them, because today mum has taught me a new word: bunga. On Hari Raya we buy bunga for the house.

(Later, we divide the flowers between a small vase and a large one. “Ibu dan anak” I say, pointing to them—mother and child.)

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COMMENDED

tanah— —hits like a blow to the stomach, clenching around my lungs and squeezing hard until all the air rushes out. It comes out of nowhere—in Indonesian class when I am trying to do a reading comprehension exercise, typing words one by one into Google translate.

Prabu Baka…attacked (menyereng?)...the kingdom (kerajaan, which sounds so much like pekerjaan)...karena…dia mau…more (lebih)...land...

I type ‘land’ into Google Translate and without a pause, tanah appears before me, a green sweeping carpet. The cascade of recognition threatens to topple on me all at once, because I have seen the word before, many times without realising, and it has secretly started to take root.

Tanah is the soil that trees live in; the place you put your house; the foundation upon which everything grows and builds. It is not the same as lahan, which speaks of land to be portioned, divided up between households. The word is grateful, it prizes the dirt underneath feet that allow roots to deepen further, burrowing so that the trees and people may harden themselves against the cruel wind. There is no word in English that speaks of all this.

Two words light up somewhere in the foggiest parts of my mind, Tanah Merah, and for the rest of the day, I am only thinking about them. Tanah Merah, Tanah Merah, Tanah Merah, Tanah Merah, two words falling together in such perfect, quick succession—two droplets merging into one heavy bead so that if I sit still enough, I can almost hear the distant echo of a woman’s voice somewhere, telling me that the next stop is Tanah Merah; I can feel the puff of air against my face as the carriage doors open with a whoosh. People are stepping off, the MRT motor buzzes in the background before the train sets off again, sailing past flats high above the wailing traffic. I lean back in my seat, try not to slide off (the plastic is so smooth). Only two more stops before I reach bibik’s place,

“The next station is Simei.”—

—the surface of the water buckles; it threatens to push itself over the edge of the bucket. It will burst at any moment, and yet, there are so many more droplets to come, how am I to catch— —cilip, hujan, barat,

marah,

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COMMENDED

jalan, pasar, panas, pengsan, abang, pamen, obek, kereta,

orang, putih, hitam, bubur, kueh, hari, koran, baca, cantik, gerger, kulit, kacang, wanita, tengok, hantu, hilang, bulat, rumah, duduk, masuk, baju, pakai, makan, makan, makan, cakap, ayam, nasi, penyek, minum, sekolah,

balik, datang, sampai, dengar, moneng-moneng, ketabuan, kenyang—

Alamak! Water spills over the sides. Gleaming pearls of water pilling, lustrous in my hand, yet soon tumbling. How am I to catch them all?

Because the bucket is fast becoming an ocean. It topples, floods my brain, my synapses.

I short circuit without warning: in Indonesian class; when mum calls Singapore; when the first word I reach for is Aiya!; when abang must be translated to ‘my brother’ around friends.

It seems everywhere the water seeps through the seams of walls and pipes: the Singapore airlines advertisement hanging from the ceiling of the mall, air hostesses tightly wrapped in their kebayas; the crown of a Javanese bride displayed in the NGV, odd in the way that it is out of place, transplanted from its island miles away.

The ocean swells and swallows in my head until it engulfs my entire being —I am thrown overboard. The water I choke on has become bitter and salty. High above, clouds materialise, pulling in more and more, mopping up the invisible vapour until suddenly what is hidden becomes a dark roiling mass. Bugis, Bawean, Malay, Javanese and Indonesian cascade and clamour; they pound with that eternal rhythm of waves against rocks; the crashing of cymbals; the pounding of a gamelan somewhere, in the distance—so urgent. The ocean transforms into a divide, a chasm that holds me back. The stars above remain obscured and I am plunged into complete darkness. There is no north, no south—only ocean.

But one day, by some chance (or gradual accumulation like water on rock) the ocean ceases its beating. Did I will it? The water calms its way around the islands, gently unfurling towards me. Warm waters of the Malay peninsula languidly ebbing towards converging straights that enclose Singapore, before rolling to form one with the Celebes, calmer now. And so here I am, above water. Looking down upon my dimpled reflection. Looking up upon the cold clinking stars that my ancestors could divine paths on. Deciding where I am to fit in this continuous cycle of suspension and release: vapour coalescing in dark clouds suspended from the heavens; downpour tapping the roofs of kampong houses. There is no use resisting the pull of the current any longer, and I am tired of swimming against it—

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COMMENDED But that blue expanse—oh! that blue expanse, it may lead me back someday.

Somehow, if I am strong enough to swim against current, and later, to swim upstream against the force of a reservoir, up and up the Kallang River, deep into the pith of the land—if I can just reach up-river where the water thins out to a fine strand on a map – there. There I will find myself at the door of an apartment in Bishan where I would wait to hear the scratching noise of datok unlocking the front door and that honey-soaked light would flood the dark threshold and I’d mount the steps, pass the door—

—plink.

—Benkel tastes like oxygen leaving the room. If that is a taste. It is a thick drop landing in my eye without warning. It hangs heavy in the air. It is a word that has been swept out from Pulau Bawean with shells, seaweed and young men sailing away, lodging deep in their hearts. It lands in my ocean as I wait at a crossing with my mum. We are near MacRitchie reservoir, the jungle hanging low in the background. Here, my mum teaches me the word. I watch her swallow like she has a toothache as she tells me. It means heartache, “you know?” mum says. It’s only later that I realise I misunderstood her: heartache is too rough a translation.

Benkel is a loss that owns you; the island marks you as one of its own, wherever you are. It is more than a damp echo, it is a violent bruise on your heart that jolts with every breath.

It shrieks like the wind, tree branches banging against the walls of your home without warning.

For enkel is a type of mourning. It is an absence without shape or form. It is the searching for the things when they are missing— a name forgotten, a place lost, a home that no longer exists, stars that are no longer legible, an ocean that becomes a chasm, a language left behind, a hunger that cannot be filled. It is a kind of amputation, a severance from the woven rope of one’s own history. A place that no longer exists.

It is the ache that takes root each time I fly across the ocean to reach Singapore. It deepens its roots, engulfs my heart, presses against my chest until I could burst. It hits all at once, when I am waiting with my mum for the lights to change so we can cross, flowers in my arms, and yet I cannot keep away.

I plunge, keep my head down; pull the ocean apart with each stroke of my arms, each word wrapping around my waist to form a rope, gently tugging with the grip of a thousand ancestors.

Because I know at the end of it, nenek is sitting in the shallows, the other end tied around her waist too and she is waiting for me.

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COMMENDED

‘ILimessy Series’

by Elissa Sadgrove 20

‘Untitled’

by Imogen McGindle

21

Linguistic Immigrant

by Ledya Khamou Whiskey bottles sweating on the coffee table surrounded by bowls of potato chips, ashtrays filled with sunflower seed and macadamia nut shells, and half-empty plates of kadeh and baklava. At the front of the living room, the TV broadcasts a YouTube clip of a Turkish latenight show, the volume low. I am mostly obscuring the view, standing in front of the TV set with a thick, plastic-covered book in my hands, reading English words out loud to uncles and aunties who exclusively know Assyrian, Chaldean, and Arabic.

This is my talent: English.

I don’t like to reminisce on that memory. Mostly because I find it all so humiliatingly earnest – me with my tween shyness and side ponytail, and my parents with their eager presentation of my most basic skill, showing off how well I had supposedly assimilated into Australian culture via reading. The book I was reading from was one of the many 2-books-in-1 editions of Enid Blyton’s St. Claire’s series that I regularly hoarded from the local library. I read the series slowly and with restraint, allowing myself a maximum of one chapter per day, so I had something to look forward to when I came home from school.

Reading the words aloud filled me with regret that I was wasting them on an unappreciative audience, as well as pure embarrassment that I was revealing so much of myself.

I felt naked, standing up and broadcasting the words that I treasured so dearly, words only previously echoed in my mind. But none of them – aunties, uncles, or parents – understood what I was reading. I was revealing so much of myself and yet it meant nothing to them.

I was revealing how awful school was. It was fourth grade and I had already gotten my

22

Illustration by Duy D

period, meaning that I had already gotten arm hair, meaning that I was already wildly insecure about my appearance. There was a boy, and he was white, and he liked a girl that wasn’t me, and the girl was white, and hairless, and blonde. Essentially, I felt less than, in an unexamined, bonedeep way that started with my accented English and ended with my hairy legs. On weekday mornings, I used to gaze at my baby sister and wish so badly to be in her place instead, curled up mindlessly in a cot, instead of heading to school, where I would spend six hours in a stuffy classroom and then a clique-littered courtyard, painfully aware of my body, hating myself.

Shouldn’t it have been obvious from the way I was reading, voice shaking, head bowed, face flushed, how much of myself I was revealing to them? I was practically shouting it from the rooftops, how this stupid, wondrous book was my saving grace, how much I hated everything else, how I didn’t understand anything that was happening inside me, and I didn’t want to anyway, I just wanted to stay home forever, alone with an English book in my room.

Over the years, I read more and more, submerged myself in the precarious, often nonsensical waves of the English language until my brain was coated with its vowels and consonants, my thoughts formed in the shape of its very syntax. To make space for this new, expansive language in my brain, others had to be kicked out; most of Assyrian was lost due to negligence, as was all of Arabic. As a result, without the ties of language, and thus, communication binding us together, the distance between my parents and I grew wider and wider.

Now, even small talk is practically impossible.

When my dad picks me up from work, he asks me how my shift was.

“Bad,” I answer.

“Bad? Why?”

In my head, in English, I reply, “Because a customer yelled in my face for not adding extra chocolate sauce to her sundae, then I went and cried in the break room.”

But I don’t know the words for “customer” or “yelled” or “break room” in Assyrian. I know the word for “cried”, but I can’t pronounce it (the soft ‘kh’ sound gets caught in my throat – it’s an effort to correctly pronounce my own surname). So, the entire sentence fails. I open my mouth to form a half-English, half-Assyrian gibberish answer, but the act tires me – I know that it would just lead to more confusion, my dad trying to mentally weave through my inaccurate grammar and accented pronunciation, asking follow-up questions about certain words, all to make sense of an inconsequential sentence. Does he really need to know about the customer who wanted extra chocolate sauce? What could he even say in response? My dad is not known for his sympathy. He’s not my friend or co-worker, he’s not going to give me the usual, desired response of “What a dipshit, like, just take your fucking sundae and go, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with people?”. For one, he would never take the Lord’s name in vain.

So, already exhausted from work and now, this conversation, I opt for silence instead.

Obviously, my dad is angered.

“And she doesn’t even respond to me,” he mutters in Assyrian, as if commentating on the scene. “What am I, your chauffeur, just driving you to and from work, as if I don’t have better things to do with my life? Next time just walk home, so someone can kidnap and kill you. You know, you are so ungrateful…”

I groan, having already heard this lecture countless times before, yet unable to say anything to combat its ongoing, long-winded melodrama. In every Assyrian conversation, I am

23

reduced to a hapless animal – grunting, yelling, stuttering, trying to wrap my tongue around words that don’t want me, fragile sentences that break against my teeth.

In contrast, it’s easy for me to speak English and feel nothing, use the length of long words to separate myself from their emotive meanings.

Last semester, I wrote a short story about cannibalism for my creative writing class. I used my most gruesome adjectives, depraved imagery, gratuitously gory descriptions. But in my workshopping session, my classmates mused over the detached narration of the piece, and the very irony of said detachment.

“It’s like there’s a gap,” someone said, and everybody nodded in agreement.

My parents like to think that English is my talent, but, in reality, it’s more of a refuge.

In English, I am a refugee, a stranger. In English, there’s a gap.

Once, in a fit of anger, I snapped at my Aussie friend in Assyrian, and it took me a few seconds too long to notice her confused expression, to realise my mistake. There was a gap.

Another time, I used the word “squealed” as a synonym for “screamed” when answering a question in class, and my Aussie English teacher grinned at me, and asked, “Squealed? Like a pig?” There was a gap.

In Assyrian, the relationship between emotion and language persists in the other direction – emotion overcrowds language, and linguistic meaning self-destructs. This is because most of the words I know in Assyrian are from childhood, so trying to explain abstract notions leaves me overwhelmed. Every time, I am a toddler throwing a tantrum, speaking without direct meaning.

Gustavo Perez Firmat, a Latin-American poet, wrote, “The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you.” I have the quote pasted above my desk, haunting me as I do my English readings, send my English emails, write this very English piece. Once, while cleaning my room, my mum saw the quote and asked me what Firmat meant, but I couldn’t find the Assyrian words to explain it. I felt it, the gap.

When I told my dad that I wanted to be a writer, he made me promise to someday write a book about Assyria. The gap, the gap, the gap.

So, how to fill the gap?

To study Assyrian, re-learn the language, would render it an even more foreign object.

What is true, textbook Assyrian? What is Assyrian without the inside jokes, the messy, historic dialects that my family lends? Also, on a practical level, Assyrian is quite inaccessible; languagelearning services largely exclude Assyrian, considering it a dead language, belonging to a longdead land, that nobody wants to revive.

Everybody wants to revive other dead languages, such as Latin, because Latin is white, it’s classic, it’s historically relevant. In contrast, Assyria lives on in small towns, in the lowincome neighbourhoods of Craigieburn, Broadmeadows, Glenroy – never in history books, or primary sources, never an option in Duolingo, or considered in the mainstream.

How to get closer? How to walk the tightrope to the other side? How to understand, and be understood?

For now, I find that in most conversations (speaking English or Assyrian or AssyrianEnglish gibberish) I tend to regress to the young girl in the living room reading her favourite book aloud to her relatives – yearning for somebody to strip back the covers of linguistic precision, break through the barriers of the inexpressible, and just know.

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Illustration by Weiting Chen

Barbie Girls

by Francesca Abrahams

The call came just as Grace was finishing the hem of a fairy-floss blue poodle skirt.

“Hello Darling.”

“Hi Mum.” “How’s work?”

“I’m run off my feet. I don’t know why I said I’d help with costumes for the musical again. It was a bloody nightmare last year.”

“Do they pay you extra for that?” ‘‘No. Not really.’’ Over the line, Grace could hear her mother take a long sip of tea. “I might get a lousy gift card at the end or something. It’s Jennifer, the head of music. She’s such a hard arse; she bullied me into it. Next year I’ll say no.’’

“Well, she probably thought you’d have some availability. Since you’ve gone down to part time.”

Grace pulled a pin from her lips and stabbed it into a ballerina shaped pin cushion.

“How are you, Mum?” ‘‘I’m alright. Except for my back. It played up yesterday. I was packing boxes. At one point I bent over, and I swear it felt like I wasn’t going to be able to stand up again.’’

Grace switched off her sewing machine and wandered into the kitchen. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’re doing better today.”

“Yes, I am. But speaking of doing things on my own Gracie, I really need you to come by tomorrow and sort through your Barbie dolls. It’s not my job and it’s an unnecessary stress on my mind to have them sitting there.”

Grace picked up the wooden spoon from where it was laying on the spoon rest her boyfriend Declan had bought for her last Christmas and stirred the pot of pea and ham soup warbling on the stove.

25

“Of course I’ll come sort through them Mum, but I don’t know if I’m free tomorrow.”

“Darling,” her mother said in a taught voice. “The settlement is soon. If you don’t deal with the dolls, then I’ll have to give them away. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. Katharine’s taking the day off.”

Grace breathed slowly in through her nose. “Ok. What time should I come by?’ *** Grace felt strange when she walked into her mother’s kitchen. It was a set, everything carefully assembled, an almost perfect mirage of their family life.

She could see herself at fourteen dragging a stool up to the breakfast bar where she would muddle through maths homework, eating feta-stuffed olives straight from the container and scuffing the island bench with her T-bars. The fridge hummed loudly and the abnormally large clock hanging above it ran seventeen minutes behind. White jonquils perfumed the room from a colourful vase in the centre of the dining table. Winter sun bled in uninhibited by spindly birch branches through the wall of windows facing the backyard.

So much was familiar, but the space was transient. She was there and yet she wasn’t.

This room, this whole place, belonged to another family now. They were squatting in their own home. ‘‘Where’s Dad?’’ Grace asked. ‘‘Playing golf. I made rocky road,’’ her mother said, lifting it out of a tray and placing it on a blue plastic chopping board. She pushed up the sleeves of her grey cashmere jumper and pulled the brown baking paper away from the wobbly chocolate rectangle.

“That’s nice,” Grace said, taking a seat at the dining table.

“I was going to make hedgehog, but then I remembered that you don’t like it.” Her mother got a huge cleaver out of the drawer and started splitting the jewel-studded rocky road into chunks.

“I love hedgehog. Kat doesn’t like it. Remember when she cried all night after her twelfth birthday party? That’s because she got all this coconut stuck in her braces, and she didn’t realise until her friends left that it had been in there all day.” Grace bit her lip, suppressing a smile. ‘‘She’s right, I hate hedgehog. It’s gross,’’ Katharine said as she clopped into the kitchen. She was wearing crocodile patterned knee-high boots. She shucked her camel-coloured coat, hanging it on the back of a stool and went over to kiss her mother on the cheek. ‘‘Hi Mama.’’ She grabbed a piece of rocky road, raising her eyebrows with a cheeky grin. “Hi Gracie,’’ she said as she sank her teeth into it.

“Well whatever. You both like rocky road,” their mother said. Grace tugged on a loose thread hanging from the sleeve of her cardigan. She could have told her mother that she hated

26

marshmallows, but there didn’t seem much point. *** After a cup of tea and an update on Katharine’s kids (Maxine was the best reader in her class, Jordi was chewing electric cables and Poppy wanted a cubby house) Katharine and Grace went to sort through the Barbies.

Katharine sat on the floor and dragged a crate of dolls towards her. “We’ll sort them into piles. Yours here and mine there.”

Grace joined her sister on the floor and started on another box. “I kind of wish Mum and Dad weren’t selling the house. It feels too soon. I had visions of my kids spending time here.”

“I think that’s a bit selfish. This place is too big for them now, Grace.”

“Yeah, I know. I was just saying.” Grace pulled out a gymnast Barbie and put it in her pile, then found a mermaid Barbie and placed it in front of Katharine.

“Wasn’t this one yours?”

“No, mine had a pink tail. Yours was blue.”

Katharine pulled out a couple of Kens. “Ok I know the difference between these two,” she said, handing Grace hers.

“Yeah, because mine was the shittier one.”

Katharine looked bemused. “What are you talking about? They’re identical.”

“They’re the same doll, yes, but mine was the one with most of the paint rubbed off. He has no eyebrows and he’s practically bald.”

“That’s what happens when you’re the little sister,” Katharine said with a shrug, as she added Doctor Barbie to her pile.

“That’s mine,” Grace said, picking it up.

Katharine huffed. “This is going to be unpleasant if you insist on being so pedantic. I thought you’d be happy to let the kids have most of them. What good are they doing boxed up in a cupboard at your place?”

“I want to keep some for my kids to play with too.”

Katharine raised her eyebrows. “What kids? You keep mentioning them, but last I heard Declan didn’t want to have any.”

Hot anger and embarrassment rose in Grace’s throat. “Did Mum…” Katharine opened her mouth to respond, but Grace cut her off. “Whatever. You can take them all. I just want my millennium holiday Barbie.” Grace lifted the crate and tipped its

27

remaining contents onto the floor. The stiff bodies of the dolls tumbled out in a series of soft thuds.

“Do you mean the one with the gold dress?” ‘‘You know the one I mean,’’ Grace said, overturning a second crate.

“I think Maxine brought that one home a couple of weeks ago after she spent the night here. Mum said she could.”

Grace’s fingers froze and dread settled in her chest. Tears began to pool in her eyes.

She stood up, walked out the door, and down the corridor to the kitchen. Katharine followed.

Her mother looked up from loading the dishwasher as Grace came in.

“Why’re you crying Darling?”

“She’s crying because her niece took her doll,” Katharine said. Grace sobbed, reaching for her handbag.

“You’re being a little hysterical, Gracie. Come on,” her mother said, reaching out a hand to her.

“You’re not supposed to say hysterical, Mum. It’s extremely sexist,” Grace said over her shoulder as she walked towards the front door, her voice thick with tears.

“You know Maxine will be really careful with her,” Katharine called after her.

“I know,” Grace said as she walked out of the house, rubbing angrily at her eyes with the heels of her hands. *** Grace woke up to the sound of the cat calling to be let in.

Tired and frustrated, she was tempted to wake up Declan, who was snoring loudly beside her, and make him deal with it. She was sure he was the reason the cat got out in the first place, since he was always leaving windows open. Eventually though, Grace got out of bed herself, tugged on her Ugg boots and stumbled through the house to the front door. She unlocked it and found the fat tabby waiting for her on the porch. He rubbed up against a Tupperware container that was sitting on the welcome mat, then dashed inside.

With a sigh, and the creak of early morning bones, Grace picked up the container and pried the lid off. Inside was millennium holiday Barbie. In her gold ball dress and fur stole. She was even wearing her tiara and necklace and she still had both shoes on.

Grace went inside and closed the door behind her. She lifted the doll from the box and wandered back into her bedroom. As she sank into bed, she thought of visiting Katharine in the hospital the day she had Maxine. Remembered kissing her sister’s sweaty brow and her niece’s little pink fist. She pressed the Barbie’s soft blonde hair against her cheek and drifted back to sleep.

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Content Warning: Ecodeath, family violence

OCEAN after the In Situ technique

by Imogen McGindle

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Made up

by Alice Daye

Make-up is an interesting word for an interesting set of objects. It suggests something fake, that you ‘make up’ a feature. Red lips, thick eyelashes, flushed cheeks that aren’t there. An

imagined aspect to exaggerate one’s beauty. Or maybe it refers to making up for a lack. A lack in the bronzed-ness of one’s skin, the sharpness of cheekbones, the smoothness of a forehead.

Maybe it’s making up for confidence, compensating for an unattractiveness which would not

be otherwise accepted. Or making up for effort in presentation, as women often must. Showing that you care, that you have considered your appearance this morning.

A thick layer of beige toned foundation, caked with pale compressed powder. I am 12, the smell of hairspray has filled the room, and my scalp hurts from the tight bun my hair has been pulled into. I am wearing a sparkly purple leotard that is too wide but too short. The foundation hides

the redness of my pubescent acne, but not the raised bumps. My face is one-dimensional. I feel grown-up. I feel beautiful.

Brown eyeshadow, topped with a pale gold shimmer on the center of my eye-lid. I am 16, it

is my school formal. I am taking a boy I have no interest in, other than being a family friend.

I was too ashamed to go alone. There is shimmery highlight on my cheek bones, it makes the foundation deftly applied with a dampened sponge seem less thick, my skin more natural.

My dress is white silk with little brown diamonds. I wear no necklace, just two dangling pearl earrings. I feel too tall. My shoulders cannot relax. I try to angle them forwards for photos, so that my collarbones jut out. Someone told me I should do that to look skinnier. My abs ache

from tensing them. I am trying to shrink into myself, be smaller. But I can’t. In these shoes I am 6 feet tall.

Dried mascara and barely noticeable concealer under my eyes. I am going to the dining hall for lunch. I am 18 and in college. My cheeks are hollower, and so the concealer hides the purple

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under my eyes that has settled there since we could no longer leave our homes for more than

an hour a day. I wear tight clothes to show off how much smaller my frame has become, even

though these people did not know me in the white dress with the brown diamonds. I am still

tall, but I take up less space. My hips cannot be narrower, but when I try on someone’s top for a night out, they remark with awe that my stomach is completely flat.

Blue eyeliner on the bottom water-line of my eyelids, I am in the second year of college. The

contrast makes my eyes look strikingly blue, larger than they normally look. My friends ask to borrow it, saying that it looks really good. It doesn’t look natural, but I don’t care. We all wear our make-up to go out. It is applied in someone’s bathroom crowded in front of a mirror. A

speaker on the counter plays Rihanna and other songs we will likely hear again at the bar. It isn’t a compensation, the blue is an enhancement, a decoration. I don’t feel prettier, I feel the same.

Like wearing new jeans. I feel ready to drink cheap cider at a loud bar with my friends.

Dark eyeliner smudged in and around my eyes, combined with a slightly shimmery black

eyeshadow just above my lashes. It’s easier to smudge than the liner. I am 20, and I live in

Dublin. My hair is short, dark brown, and I often wear it with my fringe blow dried forward. I drink half a pint of Guinness followed by a glass of red wine at pubs. I like that the dark eyes take longer to do, that smudging them in just the right way is an art-form. I like that it takes

time for me to get ready, and that this new routine matches my short hair, matches the red wine I will drink slowly to savour the taste. My mum’s leather jacket will not be warm enough for the walk home, I wear pointy-toed boots with a heel. I don’t mind that they make me tall.

Sometimes I am compensating, either for a lack in my features or a lack in my confidence.

Sometimes I am made-up, imagined. But more often, I enjoy the ritual, the meditation of

gently touching my cheeks, carefully painting on mascara. Some days I only use moisturiser

and a red lip-stain on my cheeks. I can extend the meditation if required. If more psychological preparation is necessary I will slowly pat barely visible concealer on the tiny purple indentation

under my eyes, then rub my finger in a creamy golden highlighter, carefully smearing it over my

upper cheek bone. The difference is barely noticeable, although I do look better, and anyone who

is honest will tell me I look nice today. It’s not about that, it’s about the thoughts I have as I look in my bedroom mirror. How I go through my day, what I imagine I will have for dinner, when I will next see my boyfriend, if I should buy or make my coffee before my morning class. It is

meditation, a prayer, and at the end my eyes seem brighter, my cheeks full of life, my lips gelled in peppermint balm. I am prepared. I am me.

Illustration by Weiting Chen

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‘Stay’

by Helena Pantsis

32

English Breakfast

by Isabel Greenslade

Hello. The houses out the window of this bus are brown, and the sky is

pink. It is a neenish tart landscape, and it made me think of you. Hello.

There was a chicken on the road, and a rainbow, and I thought of you. Hi. This morning we walked past a hardware shop, on our way to get chocolate

cake for breakfast. I caught the smell of paint and boring, useful things.

I thought of you. Hello. You haven’t been on my mind for a while. This morning our friend’s mouth was very tight, and I spilled coffee on her

trousers, and forgot the cigarettes. We’re going to do our own thing today.

I will go to the Picturehouse and think about the place I left you. Hello.

Today we caught the overground to Ealing to see the house where her

grandfather hung himself. We ran across a highway, holding our bags and our boobs, and it was with a floating over sort of feeling that we found the street. I thought of her, a lot. Not so much you. But I went for a walk

under Waterloo Bridge and down a scrubby old road and sometime later I

found myself at the Barbican, looking at a pile of hay, and these torn bits of human looking stuff- maybe flesh- that were glowing orange from the

inside. I wanted to cry. Four ancient TVs played moving images of cars

driving, and cancer spreading, and snow and sex and toast. The tearing, flailing, warming, loving, yearning, happening, all-of-a-sudden experience

of being a person. Life book, meat joy. You were all I thought about. You

could almost reach me here: a flight of stairs, a bus route, the pale pink sky

outside, a great big lump of time. Our shoulder blade against this world.

Ah. Hello. I’ll let you go. Give my love to the cats we had back then.

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34

81st Overall

by Luca Saunders

Ron stood sideways to the bathroom mirror, his naked body in the reflection. How had he gotten so fat? His blonde hair bunched awkwardly atop his head. He patted it down with his hand and combed through it with his fingers.

He stood at different angles to the mirror. He used to look good in a suit.

His wife, Nat, was still in bed as he opened the door of the en suite. She turned to face him. He gave her a grin. His eyes were tired.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Morning, darling.”

He walked past her to the dresser.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked her.

“Good,” she said. She was sitting up now. “I needed it.”

He laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

He put on his clothes. They stayed there facing each other for a bit.

Downstairs, their kids were just leaving for school. “Hey, do you need some money for school?” Ron asked them.

“I mean, I’ll take it if you have any.”

He reached in his pocket for two ten-dollar notes. His kids took one each, thanked him, said see ya later, and left.

For the rest of the school day, Ron stayed around the house while Nat was at work. He spent most of his time reading. There wasn’t much else to do. He didn’t read much in his youth but had now gotten the hang of it. Lots of people in his former line of work didn’t read much.

Ron used to be a major league baseballer. Third baseman, mainly. Drafted 81st overall. He had 12 years in the majors, most of them in St Louis – even won the World Series with them in 2011. He was never a standout player for them though. He was a workman and damn passionate about the game. He got that from his father he reckons.

His father was a minor leaguer. He played all round the country – Kansas City, Boston, Nashville. You name it, he probably played there. He retired at age 42 and that was only because of a broken wrist he got from diving for third base. From then on, he was entirely focused on his son’s career. The night Ron was drafted, his father jumped up and hugged him.

He was crying. Ron just stood there goofy-eyed.

“We did it,” his father kept saying.

He doesn’t like to think about it much anymore.

His World Series ring sits in a glass case in the living room. His daughter took it to school for show-and-tell once. Apparently, some of the kids didn’t believe that her dad had won the World Series and she wanted to prove them wrong in front of the class. The school called him that day, asking if he knew what his daughter had brought. He did not.

Illustration by Thao Duyen (Jennifer) Nguyen

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When he tries to remember his career, what often pushes to the front are those handful of big moments; draft night; his first major league hit; his walk-off home run against the Yankees; playing in the World Series. The rest, it seems, is sometimes hard to pin down.

The next morning, it was still dark when he woke up. The moonlight came through the bedroom window and mingled with the darkness. It made odd, swirling patterns on the walls. He rose from his bed. He felt lightheaded and everything came through with static.

He went downstairs and sat on the couch. His wife and kids wouldn’t wake for another few hours. It was all still outside except for a flock of birds that flew way up over his neighbour’s house. Or maybe they were bats.

He didn’t want the sun to come up yet. His breathing was long and deep. He walked into the downstairs bathroom and disrobed. He had purposely not eaten anything since dinner and so looked a bit slimmer. Streaks of scalp showed through his blonde hair. He leaned forward towards the mirror and pulled at the creases on his face. At his age, his father was still playing professionally.

He stared at himself for a few minutes, then he put his clothes back on and left the bathroom.

The sky was still grey.

He turned on the TV, slipped in a DVD of his major league highlights, and turned the volume way down. A teammate gave it to him on his last day.

“Me and a few of the guys went through the old games and picked out your best stuff,” he said.

He handed Ron a DVD in a clear case. Ronny’s Greatest Hits 2009 – 2021 was written on it in permanent marker. A crowd had formed around him, waiting for his reaction.

He looked at it and laughed for their benefit.

“Thanks guys,” he said. They all laughed.

He appreciated the gift but he didn’t really want it. It all felt a bit patronising to him.

Most of the guys there were much younger than him and hadn’t been in St Louis long. He ended up spending most of the farewell party with the coaches and staff. Most of them had been there for as long as him and he felt he had more in common with them anyway. If anything, his last day only confirmed that retirement was the right choice.

The DVD stayed in some drawer somewhere for the next year. After retiring, he wasn’t so interested in reliving the glory days. But several months ago, he fished it out to show the kids and would watch it every couple of weeks at least.

His highlights started as he settled, lying on the couch.

“Now this young fella stepping up to the plate right here is Ronald Seastrom, makin’ his debut in the majors. Y’know there’s been quite a lot of chatter ‘bout this young fella here – he’s made quite the impression down in the minors.”

First pitch – swinging strike. He never should have swung at that, it was way outside.

Shake off those rookie nerves you idiot, compose yourself.

Second pitch – looking strike. Okay, okay. That’s alright. Now you know what he’s got.

Third pitch – ball. Nice. Nice. Keep that composure. You’ve done it a thousand times already.

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Fourth pitch – hit. Hit into the dirt behind the pitcher, past the second baseman. By the time the right fielder has it, he’s already on first base. He takes off his helmet and waves it at the crowd. He tries to grin through his heavy breathing.

The crowd is up. The commentators get excited.

He shuffled his body to avoid the dip in the couch and closed his eyes. The noise of the crowd and the words of the commentators swirled together. He fell asleep and had weird dreams.

Two hours later, Nat woke up and went downstairs. Outside, the light was now orange. The sun hid behind the spiny limbs of the trees that bordered their property. Ron was asleep. The TV was still on but the screen was black. She ejected the disc and placed it back in its case. She was tired. Ron was lying on his side. His legs were curled to fit on the couch. He looked pathetic.

“Wake up, honey.”

He stretched his limbs out and opened his eyes.

“Huh.” “Wake up. It’s morning.”

She didn’t want the kids seeing him asleep on the couch like this.

After that, he stopped watching the DVD for good. He didn’t tell Nat. There was a guilt there he couldn’t explain.

Noon on a weekday. Ron was on the porch out back. The house was empty other than that. The trees didn’t have their leaves and the grass was drying up. He was wearing a cable-knit sweater.

He was thinking of getting back out there. Into the minor leagues, that is. This was a regular thought of his, especially after he stopped watching his highlights, as if that was the first step to his comeback.

It was clearly affecting him, not playing. Nat had brought this up before but he would play it off.

“You could coach, you could scout, even find something outside of baseball.”

He laughed it off. “Nah, it’s been nice to have a bit of peace and quiet. I’m in no rush, really.”

On the porch, the wooden railing wobbled as Ron leaned against it. He looked at the wire fence that struggled against the long grass and underbrush on the other side.

He still had a little he could teach the young fellas. Surely. He wasn’t done yet – he couldn’t be, he was a Seastrom, for Christ’s sake.

He’d have to get back in shape. He knew this. It shouldn’t be that bad though, it’s all muscle memory. And besides, the game’s gone soft. They’re afraid to get themselves dirty. He wasn’t, though, and they still knew it.

In his pocket, his phone rang. It was a telemarketer or a scam. He hung up. His coffee was getting cold. They were almost out of milk, weren’t they, and bread, come to think of it. They could do with a shop. Fruit, onion, garlic… get some chips. He should get on to that. Anyway, the game was on in a few hours.

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Why does home taste so good?

by Michelle Yu So unequivocally unequivalent Waffles. Pandan waffles. Hong Kong egg waffles (鸡蛋仔). Crispy. Soft.

Spongy. Delicious.

Donuts. Churros. Bakery store donuts. 油条 (Chinese long donuts).

Fluffy. Thinly-crusted. Dusted with sugar.

Sourdough. Bakery buns with kaya (coconut jam), or curried potatoes filling, or red bean, or lotus paste.

Sweet, smooth. Savoury. Chunky.

Lobster tail with butter. Singapore chilli crab with fried 馒头 (mini buns).

Crunch. Hand-waving spicy. Redstained, burning lips.

Meat pie. Old Chang Kee curry puff, knotted strands of crisp, melting pastry on the edge. Snap.

Danish fruit pastry. Flaky radish pastry, translucent strands of softness, a thousand spiral layers.

Poached eggs. Ya Kun Set A: Halfboiled eggs with soy sauce, dark soy sauce and white pepper, and creamy kaya melt-in-your mouth white toast (I promise, the bread’s just not the same), with two rectangles of salted butter. I could eat this every day till I die

Is it better to have never tasted these things?

Then I wouldn’t miss them.

Maybe I’m just silly, but Having tasted these things, And then Not having them, Every day, every meal, Just a 10 minute walk away...

Not having these things Right here, right now So I can grab them with both hands and shove them into my mouth, Steaming hot, Delicious...

Makes me sad.

Just the rest of my life Eating uncommunicably unequivalent equivalencies The Western inequivalent equivalent It’s just Not The Same If only Melbourne Uni did online degrees.

I’d be 10,000 miles away, on a 25°C day.

I’m grateful to be here// My gut’s got a mind of it’s own.

It’s taken me 10 years to realise: No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop missing the Taste of home.

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Illustration by Emma Bui

Illustration by Jessica Norton

Phosphenes noun

by Eleanore Arnold-Moore

1.

The world is brush strokes of light, the past dappled on the present, dreams daubed across the now, unblended – but blurring. Rubbing my eyes, I push my memories under the purple shadows of the creek watching as they always bob back to the surface.

2.

Birthday candles flicker on the Yarra driving to the doctors, the strike of scooter on springbreak ankle flashes on the rails of my train ride home. Speckled across every credit card-tap is my first milk bar paper bag.

3.

Summer varnished with my birth into the butterfly-house, each road trip dabbed as a commashaped sweep nestles into the last. In streaks of joy-tinted oils the ancient overhead projects me running through grief, into my first-grade teacher’s open arms. Refracting through the final rest of a jellyfish is us playing on that beach again. Aeons folded and foaming with light.

4.

My history glows through jade-shaded veins, nostalgia-stippled sky captured behind my eyelids, a mosaic of moments flashing as an impressionist’s dream. Rings of light, like will-o’the-wisps, guide my thoughts through the gloom.

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Glass Clown

by Star Clarke

Hold him up to the light See the cracks that others may not like and weeping tears in symphony shimmer that he gives us when he chooses to.

Mourn the blackout curtain part reveal a world monochrome and crooked like a puzzle you don’t fit into.

Your time wasn’t made for living out of spite despite passion sparked in masquerade.

He spins the planet on its axis may we reap a better day.

Trails of scattered stars he leaves like glitter at the circus and makes me believe in magic with a sleepless dreamer’s song below a night so perfect.

All of this by your design Strings humming and lips stained by wine If my laughter was made of glass then his, a summer rain of crystal.

The stage is yours! So here I sit and pray that my restless soul is graced with a single iridescent chord.

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Night Terrors

by Star Clarke

I am in the liminal space between you and the next time we meet.

The forest dilemma where a tree falls (yet how could it if no one witnessed its descent nor heard the sound of bark cracking nor the crushing of its leaves?) is speaking of a body where time is its only currency.

If no one bears witness to me and I am left to hear my own heartbeat, to feel the limbs of a phantom paralysed and the crushing of my ribcage with a single prolonged creak as I try to make out these shapes amongst the shadows– how will you know I fell?

Illustration by Jocelyn

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Content Warning: Brief use of visceral imagery related to the body

proof

by Claire Le Blond let me be your burden i wish to drown my head in your shoulders They’re wider than I expected

stronger Is it wrong to be so selfish? selfless

selfish i wish to be self–more

to face the days like no other for it’s a day it’s another day of wondering if people only love me because i do things for them and then feeling guilty for questioning everything in the first place and then feel guilty for it all and all again more, more, more i wish to be more to be more than a burden it’s the burden of proof but we’re all on the negative team in a debate no one will win because i am standing here in the meta– –phorical rain wanting to be proven wrong that i am more than a– burgeoning argument –cut short at the bud growing chase that slits me deep for i let passions and burdens fall on my knees and then feel guilty for all this victim / guilt / inferiority NONSENSE

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I AM COMPLEX i am the complex proof we need to win this case: the ins and outs of my inner bleeding legal system torn along my protruding veins guilt rests in a not more than a pound of flesh that means little more to a head that knows what the heart will not accept –because i am loved in all the ways that matter but i think i want more and i don’t know what to affirm nor negate because i don’t want to want it either i’m on the phone to my mother and i know i’m a even though neither of us intended it that way there’s a drawer stacked with rice white files of cultural / immaturity / grief / longing

–burden

of giving up and letting go of things i wanted to have. it passes by the dim light of old laptops on low battery, a hyper-fixation of distressed hands and aging eyes these passions do not belong to me this chase makes them happy

but my own desires sit still without the slightest emotion or terror, sitting still like the dew on my windowsill when i wake up before the sun rises there’s always more more to do more to say more to leave unsaid

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Illustration by Weiting Chen

Spring flight

by Akanksha Agarwal

two butterflies dance

from stem to stigma They fly Up, up, up

To the tip of my nose, and,

very quickly,

I swallow them.

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Illustration by Weiting Chen

Everyday boxes

by Akanksha Agarwal

I

stumbled

upon

abstract, alien, and daintily into a box.

an audacious construct shoved it

Until four walls teemed with forbidden fruits Silencing the wood I bathe it in tape and lock it away where no one can find It.

Scrawl on a post-it a label to describe the “unimaginative” Years later I must confront the box, in a sea of boxes As I shovel gray snow I realize I swallowed the Key

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Summer before graduation

by Ledya Khamou when the future was a rippling desert landscape and we were messy children again

toddlers throwing tantrums in the face of adulthood thick eyeliner cried off in the restaurant bathroom, outside the arcade or face down in my bedroom

sobbing like my life depended on it, lungs exploding, red-faced and fizzy as an energy drink shaken a few too many times

teeth-rotting sweetness and suffocating, time-bruised closeness the whole world tucked in the gaps between our backyards into the backseat of Viper

belting the top 40 hits of years past of cubby hole and tag you’re it days

down the slide and over the monkey bars down the shots and hurl on the sidewalk

my life was ending in the passenger seat of your car in the dot dot dot of your incoming text message

and the sun-bleached, white-green oval outside exam rooms your friend of a friend of a friend unavoidability a reminder of 15 and 16 and 17

everything on fire and ending and never coming back never to be replicated, running

through the streets breathless wheezing heart aflutter, before an evening of thunder and whiplash rainstorm, washing the summer heat off the pavement like alcohol on a knee scrape burn burn burn

‘til it becomes cool

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Illustration by Weiting Chen

ode to the booger

by Annabelle McKenzie Bueman Ode to the Booger smeared on the curtain in the children’s room of the cottage in a caravan park in the hot dry dark: unknown artist, cheap canvas, booger, or maybe ‘self ’.

I saw it there on the first night, as I readied myself for bed with my half-packed suitcase whose order had been steadily eroding with each day away from such things as laundry and cupboards, and as I tucked my garbage-bag of crumpled tobe-washing between the just-in-case jackets and altogether too optimistic pants, I happened to glance up at the window, and found the booger.

But god, what a booger.

You ought to be proud, you child who once slept in the bottom bunk on the right side of the room and reached up behind the corner of the curtain and smeared your booger there, where it sat and dried dried for weeks or months or days before I came here and set my pillow on the bunk above yours, and slept.

Your masterpiece is green and dried so hard I can feel the uncomfortable scrape of it under my fingernails, I can feel it as if I tried to wash it away, as it goes, loosened by liquid in fits and starts to send crystals of green and booger spiralling down the sink, I can feel it so strong it feels like a memory, like when you picked it I was there, picking, with you, me and you and your fantabulous dried-up crusty booger, the green gone dark and brown, dried like blood, and then I pull the curtain this way and that, to cover it, to cover the not-view to the scrapyard behind our caravan motel, to push it to the other side and back, and in the end I sleep on the top bunk, a metre and a thousand years away, and the feeling itches in my nose like a booger, something pickable, something meant to be scoured and removed and smeared on a curtain in the kid’s room of a cottage in a caravan park, but the feeling is something my finger is too grown to find, that it cannot touch without pushing farther in, and so it becomes something that I strain at in the twilight hours between expectations and backseat travels, always just beyond my fingertip, and so I lie there and strain and I wish I could just wind it all up, pull out the transience and the childerness and wind it into one great, magnificent booger, and smear it on the curtain.

Illustration by Weiting Chen

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another dimension

by Joanne Zou silence

as you steady

through torrential rain

they’re already calling it

once in ________

lifetimes

years fall away like birds rising

from a still-rippling lake look at you

across the table

as if in my imagination

or a music video glittering

filmed blue & white glowing static

hyper-echoes

of longing

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Illustration by Ashlea Banon

Content Warning: References to sex in no explicit detail

Morning After

by Noa Shenker

Nick wakes to the taste of alcohol. His sheets, drenched in sweat, are curled up at the foot of his bed. Under the rays of morning light pouring in from the unclosed shutters, he checks his phone, which hasn’t charged overnight. Three missed calls and a handful of messages from Dan. No word yet from Charlie. He reads the texts and replies: there in twenty. Gathering courage to roll out of bed, Nick’s legs buckle under the sensation of being upright. He touches his hand to his head in a weak effort to dim the pounding. Grabbing a half-empty plastic bottle off the floor, Nick skulls every last droplet. He watches the light refract through the water as it slowly empties itself out. After spraying on some deodorant and changing boxers, he checks the time.

It’s 8.23.

Nick gathers himself on the short drive over. The hungover stupor he woke in slowly sheds itself as sweat takes its place in the suppressing heat of the old Toyota. Anger embeds itself in the droplets as fragments of the night before surface. He remembers being in the smokers’ area. Remembers approaching a guy, introducing himself, asking for a number. Acutely remembers the nerves, which very quickly precipitated into fear, and then the prickly shape of that word slapped across his face.

Illustration by Harriet Chard

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Charlie’s already there when Nick arrives at Dan’s. They’re shirtless out the front in the old wicker chairs; their skin, like Nick’s, already lightly golden. Their voices trail over to Nick’s car’s open windows—Dan’s gentle, enmeshed with the chirping of birds in the distance; Charlie’s characteristically brash, entwined with the grating buzzing of the morning flies. This image of them feels distinctly like summer to Nick. Something skips somewhere in his chest.

His friends smile when they see him, and it irks him. He can’t help but smile back. He senses immediately that no apologies sit on the edges of their upturned lips.

“How farken hot is it, mate?” Charlie asks as Nick walks up to the porch. “Belter.” It’s close to thirty degrees already. They’ve been having an early-season heatwave. Everywhere smells just a little bit like smoke. Nick takes in the image of the two of them sitting there, conscious of the layers of youth hidden underneath the current shaping of their faces; every version of every face they’ve had the past ten years peeks out behind the acne scars and the awkward stubble. Any confidence for confrontation melts in Nick as he clasps hands with his friends. The bitterness evaporates in the heat as he hugs them hello, their skin gluey already from the sun.

“Good night, boys?” Nick asks. His friends smile suggestively. They giggle like children. They allow themselves to. Twenty-two is not so far from youth that its grasp has completely let itself go.

They reminisce as they make their way around the side gate of Dan’s mum’s house.

They have a small home gym out back. The boys fill up the space with their laughter and bickering and B.O. every Sunday morning; Charlie considers the ritual as close to religiosity as he’ll ever get. He jokes that the discipline might make his dad proud. Probably not, though.

“What time’d you leave last night?” Dan asks.

Nick starts pulling out weights. ‘What do you mean? Like three minutes after you.’

“Oh. Why didn’t you come in our Uber then?”

“I Ubered by myself.”

“Yeah, why?”

Nick pauses. “You two were already gone,” he says. The words suck up the airspace.

Charlie instinctively cuts through the silence.

“I could’ve dropped you home,” he says.

“You were busy.”

“Oh,” he grins. “True. Oops.”

“It’s fine, really. Wasn’t that expensive anyway.” Nick wants to say more, but he doesn’t.

They talk while they get started. Dumbbells are planted methodically across the room. A yoga mat is unfurled. Weights are altered on the leg press. Electronic music swells from a speaker and Nick sheds his singlet. They talk about who they bumped into last night, and who owes them a bump. Who looked good, who didn’t. What they drank, who they danced with. When they left. There’s a preordained ending to the story. They go to the same bar each weekend. Lots of their friends go there. They always all arrive together and Nick often leaves alone. Every Sunday morning they reconvene here, and Charlie and Dan joke and skirt around the fact that they hadn’t seen their friend leave the night before.

“You gonna be alright for this?” Charlie asks Nick.

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“What’s that supposed to mean?” him.

“Just a big night for you, is all,” Charlie replies. He did drink a lot, but Nick ignores “You go home with anyone?” Dan asks.

“Nah,” Nick says. “Don’t think there were many gay guys there, to be honest.”

“Surely a couple,” Charlie says.

“Yeah, did you talk to anyone new?’’ Dan asks.

“Did you two?” Nick quips. His friends glance at him, confused. Nick’s eyes lower in apology for his shortness. His friends nod back. They all step in from their respective corners of the room, for solidarity or assurance or just a break Nick isn’t sure. They stand close, their half-naked bodies forming a triangle, their open eyes forming a welcome sort of familiarity.

Memories of the night before poke into Nick, small jabs, leaving tiny open wounds like paper cuts. “I spoke to a few people,” Nick finally says. “It’s hard to know, you know?’’ They do and they don’t. The sympathy, when mustered, is not understanding.

“You alright?” Dan pauses the music and looks to Nick. Charlie looks at Dan, his eyes asking, why wouldn’t he be? Time sizzles. “I saw what happened.” ‘‘I know you saw,’’ Nick says. He sits on the yoga mat. Looks up at the other two. They seem so large to him from this angle. His skin flares up and something crackles in his stomach.

He sees Dan across the smoker’s area again, and feels the same pang of shame. ‘‘You didn’t come over.’’ His voice rises at the end of the statement, leaving enough room for it to be a question. ‘‘I was really fucked up,’’ Dan says. Nick doesn’t say that he was fucked up too. ‘‘And it was quick. Didn’t think you’d want any help. Thought that might make it worse.’’ It would’ve made it worse, honestly. But it would’ve also been nice. Nick shrinks.

“I’m confused,” Charlie says.

“No you’re not,” Nick and Dan reply at the same time. Even if Charlie hadn’t seen, Dan would’ve told him afterwards.

“Okay, I’m not. But why are you still angry?” Charlie’s words are sharp, hot. There’s friction in his voice.

“You know the people there aren’t like me,” Nick says. He knows the way he says it is unfair, as if his two friends are anything like the guy from the night before. It was probably only banter to the strange boy, a baseless joke, some casual meanness. But it hurt, and he left alone.

“I’ll be honest, sometimes it’s just annoying to go home by myself every week,” he concedes.

“And I do try so don’t say I don’t. I tried last night. And then I felt like shit for even bothering, and the bloke pretty much abused me for thinking he was gay.” Nick takes a breath. “I just don’t really always feel the way I want to in those bars.”

“What do you mean?” Dan asks. Nick’s forehead glistens with perspiration.

“I don’t really know how to explain it.” And he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to tell them that he likes working out here every week, and not in his normal gym, because he knows they know who he is and they don’t care. He doesn’t want to say that seeing them go home with girls stings him with jealousy, not because of whoever she is but because they fall asleep with the warmth of another body beside them and not the iciness of empty sheets. He doesn’t say that when he does build up the courage to talk to someone and gets rejected, the only way to dull the

51

heat of humiliation is with the chill of half a dozen rum and cokes. He doesn’t try to explain that going to the places they go to, full of straight dudes like them, makes him feel for some reason like he needs to be more like them. Like he’s less than them on his own.

“I want to be myself and all,” he finally says. “I just don’t really wanna stick out. Asking a random dude for his number is sticking out.’’

“Stick out as much as you fuckin’ want, I say,” Charlie chirps in. “Keep asking hot guys for their numbers. Next time one of them calls you that I’ll make sure I’m not fucking around on the dancefloor. I’ll be right there in his face.” He flexes his muscles jokingly, to drain the tension from the room. “So close I might give him a kiss. See how he likes that.’’ They all laugh. Charlie is as abrasive as he is charming.

They finish working out and clear the room. The night before isn’t brought up again, but Nick harbours a small sort of pride for sharing how he felt. They may not understand him but it felt as if they were at least trying. There was a comfort in their listening.

A semblance of the intimacy Nick craved lay in front of him right now. The fact that he was in this sweaty gym room every week was, in a way, intimate. He knew where the weights were, which cupboard the glasses were in, which shelf the towels were on, how to turn the solar heating on in the pool. There is an inherent kind of romance to that, he thinks, to knowing without thinking. * The three of them jump in the pool when they’re done packing up. It’s refreshing for Nick to feel the weight of the water topple over him, the stickiness of the sun sliding off his body. They wade in silence. Charlie dries himself off to go make their coffees. He’s the only one allowed to use Dan’s older sister’s coffee machine.

Dan turns to Nick. They rest on their knees on the steps of the pool. “I know I can’t really ever get it fully, or, like, the way you want me to,” Dan says, “but if you tell me a little more, you know, I can try.” Nick says thank you. Says he will.

“It wigs me out sometimes,” Nick tells him. “We grew up pretty much exactly the same. Now I feel like who I am is so far away from who you are.” His fingers run circles on the surface of the water. It creates ripples that crash quietly into Dan’s chest.

“I’m right here.” Dan splashes him. “We’re literally half a metre away from each other.’’

He puts his hand on Nick’s shoulder. ‘’No space at all now, see? Don’t sweat it. We’re still here.’’

Something sweet burns in the gesture, like honey or sunlight.

Charlie walks out with three little mugs. All three think the coffee he makes tastes like shit, but the other two can’t use the machine, and no-one wants to sacrifice the gold coins to go out and buy their own. Nick and Dan hop out of the water and dry off quickly. Dan reaches for a bag by the edge of the pool and pulls out a deck of cigarettes. It’s 10.32. They each light one up and watch the smoke coalesce into the humidity, as the smell mingles with real smoke somewhere faraway. They lounge in silence for what feels like a long time but probably isn’t. Despite the temperature, they still sit right next to one another; unafraid of closing the centimetres that stretch between them, uncaring of the additional heat the closeness might bring.

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Content Warning: Animal violence

Laika of Sputnik 2

by Wildes Lawler You were saved from that wasteland. That place with winters longer than its own existence.

Where things of all sorts starved to less than.

You were mongrel, orphaned, roughly the heft of a two-month-old baby, but resistant considering you were left to raise yourself.

I guess that is why they chose you.

Selected for your fur—beauty marked black and white, the same as the two-sided moon they were desperate to conquer in Soviet-red.

Yes, they wanted to break the horizon of your own back. Better yours than theirs.

Better your heart overlap itself in beats— your urine run down your legs, trembling as your body turns dead-hot. Overheating more than the wound on your belly, if you had been properly cared for, been spayed. No. Your ‘saving’ was a culling—only needed to break the horizon on your way back, to a wasteland that did not deserve you.

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Exposé from a Tooth in a Mouth, by a Second Premolar

by Remi Lequevre-Akker

Where does one begin? I suppose with a name, though my name is twined and twined again with every set of twins on the planet; give or take a few. You can call me Second Premolar, on the Right Side, if we’re going to be specific. Bicuspid is also accurate, but even more general. My neighbour would also be called a Bicuspid, yet I don’t believe we are anything alike, aside from our joint employment in Masticatory.

My life started in a cocoon. Concealed up high in the gum of my mouth, much like a seedling in soil. The term adult “teeth” is used to describe my denomination, but I prefer the term late bloomer. Most late bloomers are often teased out in the world, but not us. Better late than falling out after only a few years of short-lived masticating. I won’t get into the politics of it, but yes, you’re right to assume we late bloomers effectively kill the Baby Teeth by knocking them out of their socket.

In tooth years, we don’t include the years in the gum, making me seven years younger than Jake, the person whose mouth I reside in. He was seven when I was “born” if you want to put it like that. He was quite a boisterous child. Always running and jumping, playing Cowboys and Indians or superheroes. Getting him that trampoline for Christmas was the worst of ideas; nearly shook us out of his skull.

An early memory would be the invention of those toothbrushes that played music into your mouth as you brushed. Those were ingenious, if not short lived, though the discovery by children to stick them in their ears was one unfortunate unforeseen side effect, along with the misapprehension that Queen’s We Will Rock You is only ninety seconds long. Well, then again, most of the lyrics are the same.

One of the main similarities between teeth and their owners is the feeling of discontent. Everyone fears monotony, being stuck in the same place with the same old job—and this is all the truer for us teeth. Bolted down, with only one profession available, the life of a tooth can be long and dreary. And people wonder why their teeth rot away with not so much as a reason, or a brief farewell? You don’t think about goodbyes when you’re that suicidal. I remember when I was seven, I saw a late bloomer kill himself. It was a pretty traumatic event. Must have been sick of chewing the fat was the old joke they always made. Probably right, too, he was a Second Molar, and they certainly burn hot and bright. It’s hard when something like that happens in your mouth. Shakes the whole community to the roots. Makes you think what life is all about.

Jake wasn’t a toothy smiler, unfortunately. I mean sure, the pompous incisors and canines got their face-full of sunlight easily enough. But for the rest of us? We’d have to wait for photo days, family events—especially the ones when his aunt would force him to “smile properly”. But only seeing birthday cakes and Christmas trees never really gave me a real sense of the everyday in the outside world. Legally blind is probably the most accurate term, for us molars, at least. Though I like to think of us as always being veiled by a curtain of happiness that only allows us to see the good stuff.

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Jake only ever went to the dentist twice as a teenager. Once was when Second Molar passed away.

They were worried the extra space would mean the other teeth would move around too much. We had our first X-ray, a very exciting moment. Having the chance to be immortalised in a picture is not always on the cards for teeth, so we felt lucky. Never got to see the photo ourselves. Teeth X-rays aren’t all that funny, I suppose. Of course, with his dental health there’s been ups and downs for all of us over the years. Three of us have had our cusps filled in with and been renamed as Crown One, Two and Three. They’re not happy about it, but neither was Jake. And that day he chipped a tooth on an olive pip was horrific. He hasn’t bought olive bread since.

After he turned seventeen, the late-late bloomers began to arrive. It can be quite awkward welcoming new people into your mouth. Especially after so long, you feel like you don’t need anybody else. And why should we have to accommodate a bunch of smartarses who think they can call themselves “Wisdom Teeth”? I’ll tell you right now, there’s nothing wise in gate crashing a party that already has two sets of molars. Granted, we were missing one Second Molar, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle ourselves.

Now then, let me get this out of the way by stating that kissing is tremendously awkward.

Especially when you’ve had no time to get to know the other mouth. You’d be scolded by your mother for bringing home a stranger, yet somehow you can let our mouth be invaded by a bunch of unknowns. And it is the worst when they’re a mouth of no-hopers. Not brushed, not clean, stains all over the place. And what could be worse? They don’t want to be there either. Sometimes it becomes just a shouting match back and forth. Ruins the night out.

As a masticator, I believe one needs to take pride in their work. Albeit it’s the only work I have ever known… or will know. One attempts, in friendly competition, to prove they have the sheerest of edges and strongest of cusps for grinding and pulverizing. But ultimately, it is a communal effort, and you are in partnership with the rest of your co-workers in every bite. It is in this unity a tooth can try to reconcile what might otherwise be considered quite a banal and repetitive occupation.

My favourite food would have to be a nice piece of dark chocolate. My least favourite, which I can declare as the voice of the mouth, is potato chips. There’s no pain quite like chunks of mushed up chip being packed in and left to set like plaster on a wall. And if there are no toothpicks on hand, you might as well just rot yourself. Drinks and liquids are enjoyable, a free ride down the oesophagus—you could consider it as break time for teeth. Every tooth has a personal favourite beverage, though we all remember the first time Jake tried tequila as an almost religious experience.

Baptism by fire, to be apt.

Nowadays, Jake brushes his teeth only once a day before bed. Though back when he was little it was twice a day at the order of his parents. To be honest, the twice-a-day doctrine given by dentists, in my opinion, is so you burn through your toothpaste in half the time. Brushing in the morning after eight hours of sleep does very little, especially if you brush before bed. Unless you have some sort of culinary sleepwalking issue, the morning brush is purely cosmetic. Flossing, on the other hand, is incredibly helpful, especially for those potato chip chunks. Jake has yet to discover flossing, unfortunately, but luckily his current toothbrush is electric.

Jake went to university to study accounting. Making money was always his life’s ambition. He never really had a passion for accounting—then again, who does? But his father had once told him it would be a good and stable job, and Jake always liked to feel stable. He dropped out halfway

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through his second year. Said he was “bored shitless”. I thought he should have just stuck out another year-and-a-half and got his degree. Anyway, you can’t run their life for them; and this was another one of those moments when you can really feel the disconnect between yourself and the owner of the mouth you live in.

Nepotism was Jake’s last resort. He wound up getting a job with his father at a repairs company.

His father has never really said he was proud or disappointed in Jake since then. Of course, his mother always said she was happy if he was happy, but that saying always soured when one thought “Well, what if Jake isn’t happy?” Expectations just lead to disappointment. I learned that in the gum. Growing up, you’re not sure where you’ll break through. Incisor, canine—you always think of what the best possible outcome is for yourself, and it can be hard to grapple with the reality of the situation when you finally move from here to now.

Today, Jake is forty-three, making me thirty-five. Jake still works with Dad in an office, bolted to a chair. He’s been there fifteen years and to be quite honest, I still have very little idea what his job involves. I know for a fact Jake never wanted to end up here. I know that because I felt the exact same way all those years ago when I was born. We land where we’re thrown, I suppose.

Jake is quite complacent with dental appointments, limiting them to once every three or four years. It can be hard for a tooth to feel that they are not the centre of their person’s universe in the same way they are to you. I imagine that is what unrequited love feels like. To dedicate oneself to another, but not have the same dedication returned can be enamel breaking. But I take solace in knowing I am stuck where I am, much like how Jake is stuck where he is too.

But there’s a strange distance between us and him that never existed in the early years. I used to really think he was on track to be one of those happy people like on television, getting a check from Ellen DeGeneres or getting married to Julia Roberts. To be honest, I never expected much of Jake, but I hoped he would be happy. I hoped he could wake up each day and be content with where and what he is; and perhaps he is—I can’t see inside his brain. But I’ve also been with him his whole life, and I like to think I know him well enough to say I think he is in trouble.

You see, he used to have a wittiness that I think he’s lost. I remember once at a dinner party they were asking, “If you could have anyone over for dinner, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you serve?”, and without missing a beat Jake announced, “I’d have Hitler for dinner, but I’d only serve steak.” Maybe it is that punchiness that has slowly eroded over the years, like an insidious plaque that sets into a tartar you can’t brush off. I very much hope that hasn’t happened to him.

Jake is just existing, like we all are. Trying to make the most of what we have. Regardless of how small what we have may be. Perhaps I’m being selfish, wanting that curtain of his happiness open only so I can see more of the world. I should be grateful for what I have, as much as any tooth or mouth. Maybe it is true what they say, that sometimes, something is indeed better than nothing at all. Not everyone can be the star of the show, even of their own show in some circumstances.

No, there cannot be winners without losers. No highs in life without lows. No treasure without trash. No gain without pain— apologies, you probably don’t care much for lectures from a tooth.

I’m not even a First Premolar.

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‘Sinking’

By Duy Dang 57

‘Hortus Conclusus’

By Duy Dang

58

‘the lone traveller’

By Duy Dang

59

‘Diatoms 1’

by Alison (Ali) Richardson 60

‘Dinoflagellates 1’

by Alison (Ali) Richardson

‘Opal dreaming 1’

by Alison (Ali) Richardson 61

Our Paradise (我们的天堂)

by Felicity Yiran Smith

Do you remember? 在茫茫的灰色里， It was a fractured web of green. 叮当的门铃声, Our laughter， 逃跑的脚步. 漫长的夏日， Our wanderlust unsated by walled confines, We’d climb, 二十, 三十层, to the steeples, Above, where there is only 你与我, 来瞭望龙蟠的环路.

窗边的柿子,

Rotting sweetly,

人造的假山流水, Drip away. 日高影长, 天气炎热, 我们潜入地下, Our katabasis, To discover what was hidden in the concrete labyrinth.

Braid long strands of grass into a chain, Swear, hands to the heavens, 长大了也一定当朋友.

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But now, alone, 我们盼着对方的远闻, 一只没有耳朵, 一只没有眼睛, A pair of headless birds.

When purple blooms along the graveyard, 甜蜜的香气飘入睡梦中, I still think of 我们的天堂.

在茫茫的灰色里: in the vast greyness 叮当的门铃声: chiming sounds of doorbells 逃跑的脚步: footsteps running away 漫长的夏日: slow summer days 二十，三十层: twenty, thirty floors 你与我: you and I 来瞭望龙蟠的环路: overlook serpentine ring roads 窗边的柿子: the persimmons by the window 人造的假山流水: manmade miniature mountains and waterfalls 日高影长，天气炎热: the sun high and shadows long, weather burning hot 我们潜入地下: we enter the underground 长大了也一定当朋友: to be friends even when we grow up 我们盼着对方的远闻: we await each other’s distant news 一只没有耳朵，一只没有眼睛: one without ears, one without eyes 甜蜜的香气飘入睡梦中: the sweet scent floating into dreams

Illustration by Tina Tao

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Content Warning: Darker themes of race and brief abstract writing on self-induced vomiting

see for yourself

by Anisha de Silva

Use of Sinhala language: Translation Amma: Mother Thatha: Father Dreams tend to wash over you You dream of your blood You dream of the ocean.

You grew up oceans away from your blood.

But still feel it written all over you Heavy breathing as the earth around you unfolds, you are yourself right now, at 20. Running in synch with the durable shores. Your feet covered in damp sand. You look up to the right and see your Amma as a young girl running beside you. You see her youthful face, smiling with pure undeniable innocence. Completely oblivious to the hardships that she would endure, the beautiful languid shape her life would take. Unconscious of you, her youngest daughter, who she would mold like soft clay with worn fingertips. This daughter, you, who would soon love her like nothing else on this planet.

In the cold dark milks of the ocean brown blood floats up to the surface Unable to sink Unable to be forgotten You hear the resonating sound of a tongue clicking to the roof of a mouth. Who’s tongue?

Where? You don’t know. But as the clicks fade, the sphere around your dream shifts.

The world your mind has conjured collapses. Your youthful amma disappearing under the ocean.

The colours disperse.

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Heavy breathing again.

Inhale the mass, exhale the light.

Your eyes are pulled open, you’re alone in a hollow room with your Thatha. The strobing lights – colourful, spectral – melt in the background until you just see your father’s eyes: searching for you. The colorful patterns of your histories swirl around you and in this moment, you both exist in a vacuum. Displaced from time; displaced from the weight of your sorrows. You realise, he has loved you since the moment he drew breath, he loved you as he was born into the air. You remember, as his body was made, it was delicately folded through and through with love. In this moment – perhaps in all the moments, all of time stitched together in one nonlinear stroke of love - Thatha grabs your body towards his own. He holds you so tight it’s almost as if he never let go as an infant. As if you both have been intertwined from birth. You sigh a wet sopping relief.

That gap between your skin, sealed in one stroke of time.

Ah do you see now?

Brown blood runs warm.

Amma and Thatha made your skin with spineless love. But you can’t you can’t rest in it wholly.

You wake up in the middle of the night, heart thumping outside your skin. Foreign words tumbling through your mind. These words are wet and formless. You try to gently catch them with your tongue, sound them to reality. But your mother tongue was never born, she doesn’t exist. You’re left alone in your bed, like a desperate mammal. Heavy tongue hanging out your mouth, weighing on your chapped lips.

Learn your mother tongue the voices say, you can reconnect. But you’re scared, once you step into that space, you’ll realize the gap is too far to bridge. Your blood will never truly be brown, you see, you missed your time. Might be easier to stop longing for something that doesn’t exist, something you can never reach. Or even if you do reach it, hold it in your two hands, what if it doesn’t fit well inside your body? You won’t actually enjoy how it feels going down your throat.

You’ll want to burn it in your acidic stomach. Churn it among the bile. Let it make you feel so nauseous. Press your face into your pillow. Muffle out desperate cries into the fabric. Get up eventually when you can’t bare the pain any longer. Stick your two fingers in-between your lips, right through to the very back / reach down inside / wretch / deeper / wretch / one pin further / wretch / click / wretch / ah there you go / liquid language burns the tips of your fingers / quick QUICK get them out / she’s standing over you / she clicks and says, your fingers, out now! / they’re out okay, you splutter / you watch the language spill out your lips / brown blood all over the floor.

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So, I write, you think we bleed the same blood? We’re different. You’re the ocean. I’m brown blood. You are not me; we are not the same and you have made that abundantly clear.

I’m angry and I’m desperate and you’re wrong we are not the same and how could you say that because you forced me to peel of my skin before I even knew what skin was and you’re wrong because I’m naked and I’m alone and I can’t see myself and the sweat keeps drippling off my body and you’re wrong. You’re wrong, you are wrong god damn it and I keep trying to tell you but no matter what you say, it never feels right, and my skin never feels sealed and that’s not your fault, I know, and I do I do I do I love you so much, but I still feel so far away in my skin and I’m frustrated that you will never understand and I know there’s nothing you can do to make that right and I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I’m sorry but I’m sorry and I feel like I should stop writing now because writers say we write because our voice are ours.

But my voice was never mine; it was pulled out of my throat generations before I existed. I am not me; I am forced to live in a world made for you. Structures protruding from the dirt in all directions, for you. But no matter how much volume they fill in the air around me, my people live in the soil beneath, connecting under everything you’ve made.

Push your ear against the ocean floor Listen to us, Brown blood runs warm Brown blood is strong and that doesn’t make yours any weaker. Brown blood is warm and that doesn’t make yours any colder. Brown blood is enduring under the earth. Brown blood is strong as we thump our fists against our chests and scream out into the dark void. Brown skin gently wraps around our soft cracked bones. Seeping in the breaks, gluing them together. Our bodies and our souls are tightly wrapped in a sticky love connecting us to all the generations before.

Can you see me, can you see all of this? You must see how our paths have diverged to see how we can reconnect them. We are different, that is okay. I want to hold you, to love you so freely.

Please see me, understand why my blood is the way it is.

Brown blood runs warm.

Hold my hand.

See for yourself my love.

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What Vincent van Gogh Didn’t Paint

by Xiaoyu Kang

Original text for ‘What van Gogh Didn’t Paint’ was taken from Virginia Woolf, 1931. The Waves. Hogarth Press, 169

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‘The Headless Man’

by Gunjan Ahluwalia

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‘Intertwine’

by Mary Nguyen 70

‘Gold Sea’

by Mary Nguyen

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THANK YOU

The 2023 Above Water team would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the student artists and writers who have enlivened our anthology. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the extraordinarily talented Farrago artists who have illustrated the written pieces in our anthology. It was a privilege to catch a glimpse of the ocean of talent, dedication, and creativity of our student community.

We are honoured to have been trusted with your work and the honesty, humour, horror, beauty and fluidity of your voices. We are thrilled to be able to showcase your creations within these pages.

As we unveil this anthology to the world, we encourage you to continue your creative journey, exploring new horizons, pushing boundaries, and challenging the status quo. Your creativity knows no bounds, and we can’t wait to see how your artistry evolves in the years to come.

Thank you for sharing your talent with us.

With love,

The 2023 Above Water Team,

Xiaole, Weiting, Savier and Stephen

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‘Oil Spill over Night Sky’

by Mary Nguyen 73