Above Water 2018

ABOVE WATER

CREATIVE WRITING ANTHOLOGY

Editors: Ashleigh Barraclough, Esther Le Couteur, Freya McGrath, Ashleigh Morris, Monique O’Rafferty and Jesse Paris-Jourdan

Editorial Assistant: Abigail Fisher Judges: Jack Callil, Leah Jing McIntosh and Harry McLean

Internal artwork: Jean Baulch, Alexandra Burns, Lief Chan, Bethany Cherry, Simon Clark, Rebecca Fowler, Winnie Jiao, Margaret Lim, Arina Mizuno, Rachel Morley, Chido Mwaturura, Elsa Ramirez, Rukaya Springle and Sophie Sun Contributors: Eve Asquith, Quinn Bader, Jean Baulch, Sarah Bostock, Rebecca Fowler, Jamisyn Gleeson, Natalie Fong Chun Min, Elyssia Koulouris, Clarrie Lock, Nick Parkinson, Ruby Perryman, Hugh Rayner, Greer Sutherland, Tasnim Tahrin, Amanda Tan, Leilani Wang, Lucy Williams, Caitlin Wilson, Gary Yang, Stephanie Zhang and Alice Zuzek Design: Esther Le Couteur

Above Water

Creative Writing Anthology Volume 14, 2018

Above Water is the annual creative writing anthology published by the media office and the creative arts office of the University of Melbourne Student Union. Launched in 2005, it marks a turning point in the breadth of creative writing published by and for students.

Now in its 14th year, Above Water is open to all current University of Melbourne students. The editorial committee blindly read all submissions and then decided on a shortlist of pieces for publication. This year’s written shortlist was then judged by Jack Callil, Leah Jing McIntosh and Harry McLean who determined the prize winners.

Written Winner Natalie Fong Chun Min ‘how to: birth (a) name’

Cover Art and Graphics Winner Rachel Morley

Written Runners-up Ruby Perryman ‘No Wander’ Eve Asquith ‘I Would Give You Some Violets’

Graphics Runners-up Winnie Jiao and Jean Baulch

PAGE ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

c o n t e n t s FICTION

POETRY

5: colourless; blue

10: to nineteen

Leilani Wang

16: “I’m Sorry” “I’m Gay” “I Love You”

Stephanie Zhang

13: saturday morning at yah yah’s

Clarrie Lock

27: drip

Stephanie Zhang

23: No Wander Sarah Bostock

32: A Lovely Face

Ruby Perryman

24: Passing Through

Greer Sutherland

45: I Would Give You Some Violets

Ruby Perryman

42: the one dimensional girl

Eve Asquith

55: I’m a little teacup

Elyssia Koulouris

53: smile-gardeners

Lucy Williams

82: PASSENGER

Leilani Wang

66: op( Quinn Bader

100: Baby Lotion

Natalie Fong Chun Min

81: You/I Jean Baulch

106: This Time with Meaning Hugh Rayner

122: Matchbox Greer Sutherland

2

) shop

Jamisyn Gleeson

88: my poems are Melbourne trains that never leave quite on time Tasnim Tahrin

92: chronic Rebecca Fowler

102: The Children are Angry

NONFICTION 68: Shame/Pride Nick Parkinson

Caitlin Wilson

104: how to: birth (a) name

118: Making Dumplings Gary Yang

Natalie Fong Chun Min

114: Folklore Amanda Tan

116: Blood and Bone Alice Zuzek

127: mums & cocks Clarrie Lock

‘SEA DRAGON’ BY ARINA MIZUNO

3

colourless; blue

BY LEILANI WANG

The world is dark when he wakes. This is how he knows the colour black, the first colour everyone finds and some live with for the rest of their lives. Practised, precise, he closes his fingers around the glasses he left on the bedside table overnight. Breathes in, opens his eyes: this is how he knows the second colour, for which he does not have a name.

He sits up and shifts his body around until his feet touch the floor, before standing.

Mornings are even and patient in the absence of commotion, and the stillness of these early hours is pliant under his touch. Drawing the day around him as he dresses—quick with buttons and slow with the crease of his sleeves—he lifts his gaze to the sky outside his window.

It is colourless, just as it is every day.

Each child is assigned a colour at birth: the fruit of complex calculations based on birth times, family histories, exhibited tendencies. They take this colour in a disc, held to their eye to protect them from unfiltered light; some people never see the colour white for themselves. Some never see anything.

He has never seen the colour of the sky, but it isn’t half as bad as what it could be.

Shrugging on a jacket, he picks up his bag and swings out of the door.

A methodical person by nature, his morning routine is habitual and predictable. At the café below his apartment, the same boy is working again and they exchange gentle small talk, briefly holding each other’s discs over their own when he waits for his order.

Trust comes easily for them, but he knows better than to mistake goodwill for understanding. No-one truly reaches for the soul of another and speaks to it, unless they can see what the other sees—but no-one can ever see what others see. The discs are as much a blessing as they are a curse.

In the shadow of the train station overhang, a man holds out his hand. He is proffering a wordless conversation which he takes, fingers closing around the smooth plane of a disc. Inclining his head in gratitude, he holds it carefully over his right eye and smiles as the sunlight curves across the tracks, a verdant sea billowing towards them the colour of his father’s gaze, or the shape of his mother’s voice.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEAN BAULCH

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colourless; blue “Good weather,” the man is saying.

“Good,” he agrees. “You have a beautiful green.”

The man hums. “Not really,” he disagrees, but he doesn’t pursue the conversation.

Few do, after the colour has been announced between them—like a courtesy of sorts.

A nod to a deeper name with which both are now acquainted. They lapse back into companionable silence as he returns the disc to its owner, and when the train sweeps into the station, he thinks of the man’s green flooding the sky.

He likes to study people.

Spring announces itself to him in the shape of heavy winter coats drawn into windswept scarves; people speak of the weather with more forgiveness, and smiles hold for longer. The world metamorphoses around him like a girl growing out of heartbreak, spine uncurling after the impact of someone else’s unkindness.

What he likes best is the sky, even if he has never truly seen it. Books in school called it the colour blue, profound but as insubstantial as water slipping through his fingers. A thin colour, different from the unyielding pitch of black or the smooth consistency of white, which is itself known to him only in the texture of blancmange or a ceramic dish. Blue for the colour of water, or the distant silhouette of space.

He has never met a blue. At least, he has never recognised one before, just like he has never met a broad range of other colours—yellows, sunborne, or even flat reds who see the world in fire. Some people claim to have made their acquaintance with every colour but that’s a lie, if you ask him. Whites are statistically proven to account for less than a millionth of the world’s population, but obsessive colour magazines are saturated with fraudulent celebrities.

He meets this girl in in that hollow absence between 2 and 4 am in which everything seems slow and time folds together. It’s a record shop, but it could be a library—the shelves are heavy with the weight of tomes just as much as they are by vinyl. He doesn’t know anything about records.

She is reckless with the way she moves—that is what draws his attention. Her steps are too far apart or too close together, inducing a stumble; her hair is loose and her hands flutter about her like birds. But she is so, so gentle with the records. There is a way about her, a convergence of the night into a point of light in the store. When she knocks lightly into a shelf, causing a quiet rattle, he moves towards her without thinking.

“Can I help you?”

She squints up at him, eyes narrowing. Perhaps she is a little tipsy. “Are you hitting on me? Because I don’t swing that way.”

“No,” he reassures her, holding out a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m gay.” Drowsiness makes his confession tumble nakedly, fearlessly, into the open. Perhaps he won’t even remember this conversation tomorrow when sleep finally concedes to him.

“That’s what I said,” she raises a brow, retracting her hand from his reach. “I don’t like girls.”

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colourless; blue “Oh.” It blindsides him out of nowhere, a past he’d buried like a crime and resurrected, years later, to make his peace with who he was before. “I’m a boy,” he explains, awkward but firm.

Her eyes widen and she scrambles to her feet, stumbling a little but wildly sobered.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasps, bracing her hands on his forearm before hopping back, visibly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry for assuming—that was really rude.”

“It’s okay,” he laughs a little, and it really is. She’s sincere about this, and it’s kind of cute. “Do you still need a hand?”

“No,” she coughs self-consciously, pulling her cardigan around her shoulders more securely. “But thanks.”

“At this time of night?” He drove here.

She hums, searching his gaze and adjusting the reply on her lips. “No, I’ll get a taxi,” she promises. “Thanks for worrying. Catch you later, blue.”

He stills. “Blue?”

This snags her attention again, and her eyes meet his in confusion. “Wait,” she says slowly. “You don’t know that you’re a blue?”

“No,” he says. He is left wordless, mute.

She scrutinises his face, and smiles sympathetically. For a moment, he thinks she will say something, explain herself. Apologise for the bewilderment into which she has tossed him.

“Well, I’ll see you around,” she leaves instead, taking his silence for assent.

He watches her go through the glass. She has a funny way of looking around, even though it is so dark—like she is searching for something, perhaps. It is an interest in the surroundings that he seldom sees in people who live too quickly to notice everything around them.

It rains in the evening, the sallow coldness of everything suffused with a dread thick as the winter left behind. He ducks into a corner store. Dripping rainwater onto the linoleum, he slides a cheap umbrella over the counter and the woman punches the purchase through on her register. When he turns to leave, she holds up her disc for him to take.

Puzzled, he squints through the disc and everything hushes, dims down to a subdued violet. Edges soften into shadow, and the angry fluorescent lights overhead warms into a welcoming lilac.

“Better?”

“Better,” he affirms, lips twitching up into a half-smile. “Violet,” he tips his head towards her in a belated greeting as he hands the disc back.

She smiles back, but her brow furrows almost imperceptibly. Her thoughts blur inaudibly into the silence between them, stretching taut. “How about—?”

“Oh—” he loops the umbrella over his wrist, and shuts his eye as he slides his disc out from its frame, perched in his glasses. “Here,” he hands it to her.

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colourless; blue­ At once, her face unwinds and her smile is patient. “Violet,” she agrees ambiguously, passing it back over the counter. He knows she is referring to his disc, but she is wrong.

“No,” he tells her gently, but he is used to this. Perhaps it is because everyone has different names for colours—no-one is ever able to pinpoint the shade of his own disc.

He has also been told, repeatedly and religiously that no-one will ever understand what he sees, like the pinching out of a childish fantasy or a candleflame stuttering in the draught. It is the same way in which he will grow old to tell his own children, again, not to open their eyes without discs, and not to hold onto the foolish hope that someone will one day see what they see.

But then, he remembers—he is blue. Someone saw into him.

Taking a risk, he extends his hand palm up again. “Can I?” She interprets this for some degree of comfort, he thinks. She is kind. Carefully, she presses her disc back into his open hand. Fingers shaking, he pulls his own disc from the frame of his glasses, and sets hers in its place. Inhales, everything tingling around him with anticipation.

When he opens his eyes, everything is red—wildfire red, the vermillion of a summer sunset and the death of a star.

She is watching him closely. “Red,” he ventures tentatively. “Thank you.”

For a long moment, she is silent, and he worries that she will call the police on him.

Convict him of unruly behaviour, or for putting his own life at risk by trying on another’s colour without the protection of his own. Or by trying to see what someone else sees, for the very first time.

Then, she smiles.

“Yes,” she says, and her voice is warm with delight. “Red.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEAN BAULCH

9

to nineteen

BY STEPHANIE ZHANG does the candour of a grapefruit sky keep you awake? and a half empty silhouette stands with boxing gloves waiting for the other shoe to drop. you can feel the breath caught in your throat wedged between your molars and creeping up your spine, hiding behind the stage curtain waiting to flee an empty stage when inevitably someone says ‘macbeth’ and the theatre burns to ash. red is red and is the only. you’ll want the red, the bloodied face and flying teeth or at least the sweet childish red inside the thick peel of fruit buried within rinds softly beating because let me tell you about that red: i sleep with that red, like psyche with her demon husband, waking to fragrant possibilities but toddling on iron tracks waiting patiently for her final train ride. i could tell you of the agitation of red, could tell you of red’s persistent disquiet; i could tell you that i grow fond of the red, or simply tell you that i am the red, i am made of the red and to tell you: let the red in over your body just as i have.

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ART BY JEAN BAULCH

saturday morning at yah yah’s

BY STEPHANIE ZHANG there is jazz playing in the air between us and the beer bottle in your hand is cracking from the pressure of being 11000 metres under water where light saunters and meanders in rainbow colours of blue and purple and green that favourite green of yours found only in the translucent battery acid of this friday’s Sunnyside saxophone grooves and buttons and gold buttons pressing while I shiver beside you naked and freshly birthed swaying fingers touching gently touching as you tower softly like a cumulus cloud found only in the dead of night between the sheets of meringue pie and chocolate cake smeared back and forth like a guitar strum poured in with gin and tonic like a lime like the green lime colour of your palm pressing onto my hip my waist my arm my wrist green like the strobe lights and green like the colour of your eyes.

ART BY JEAN BAULCH

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‘HEMOSTASIS’ BY SIMON CLARK

“I’m Sorry” “I’m Gay” “I Love You”

BY CLARRIE LOCK

Gum. There’s so much it’s bloody ridiculous. It’s like an abstract impressionist painting of a hillside; greens, blues and gooey stalagmites of white. Looking up I’m so repulsed I squish myself against the floor, but I won’t move, I can see him watching. Watching, flicking his cascading curls out of his bottomless brown eyes with every glance. We’ve been down here for about fifteen minutes now, not really talking much mainly; she just keeps using her little blue Nokia to send our names to different dumb love calculators.

They’re like the ones from MTV, “dial 1800-bmyboo and receive a text back instantly with your smoochin’ compatibility”. She keeps looking over at me and smirking, and I keep trying to do a reassuring smile but on the way out it becomes an uncomfortable wince, surprisingly she seems satisfied by this. She just keeps tapping away at the little glowing keys. I start chipping at the edges of the painted skirting board. Trying to distract myself from my growing disinterest and repulsion at the mountain of Hubba Bubba that is slowly elongating towards my face. I keep relishing the idea of him watching, him seeing his puffy effeminate friend talking to a girl. I know that enduring the boredom won’t be in vain because it means I’ll have the slightest bit of ammunition.

I’ll have something to fire back when a boy with frosted tips, food encrusted braces and one budding pube under his arm calls you faggot from the top of the slippery dip.

Maybe today, when my friend asks, “You’re not gay, are you?” I can say, with maybe a bit of newfound conviction, “Nah remember that time under the table.” It still shocks me every time my friend actually believes me. Somehow he looks past the funny way I talk, the way I ask to play ‘truth or dare’ every sleepover and always insist that dry humping

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“I’m Sorry” “I’m Gay” “I Love You” is a fundamental part of any good game. He even ignores the way I sneak glances at the furry patch between his stomach and his dick every lunchtime after I pee in the stall instead of the trough. Seriously, fuck the trough.

“High school graduation?”

“Sorry?”

“When did you graduate high school, son?” His eyes take a long stroll up my body, from brown leather Mexican boot to my ragged zombie apocalypse-esque sleeveless shirt. He holds the ID under the torch, flicking it idly between his big greasy fingers.

“Um well I’m on like a gap year so I finished a couple—no a year ago, I mean—” “Uh-huh.” I’m sure each flick will be the last, and all that slime will act like rocket fuel as my precious twenty-one-year-old cousin’s ID flies across to the other side of the West Hollywood street. My stomach is aching like a motherfucker, waves of nausea gargle about in my gut, happens every time I drink, I vow never to drink vodka lemonade again.

“So it ah, would be two years ago, yeah two years.”

He looks at me with his beady brown eyes and bald head for what seems like an eternity. Finally, with an exasperated chuckle, he hands the now rather oily ID, back to me.

“In you go, buddy.”

Fuck yes, I walk past his burly mass to the soundtrack of my loyal red headed ‘fag hag’s’ triumphant heels clicking against the sidewalk.

Inside it’s a gay mecca, a hot sweaty mess. The music is rapturous; it’s a celebration of the diva spirit undercut with vibrant techno beats that force the body to grind and twirl, twist and frolic. We create a posse whilst waiting in line; usual inhibitions ground down by about six too many vodka lemonades. We befriend the very formally introduced “Jerry Micheal Hernandez”. He is short but has this stubble that makes him seem older, daddy issues, I keep thinking as he squeezes my arse… hard. I find myself pressed between Jerry and yet another boy with a profoundly tight chest harness, acne scarring and incredibly inciting brown eyes, not to mention “baby had back”. People dance around me in circles. We point and laugh, grind against another until the moment builds and my tongue is in someone’s mouth. Flicking over the backs of their teeth, my hands drift around their body coming to rest in the most personal places, not just the crotch but their armpits too, the small of their back and just behind their ear. A message pops up on my phone; beside it a picture of a face framed by curls, not tonight. I keep getting into my head, I hope they don’t think I’m going to take them home, Jesus he’s gonna wanna fuck, should I fuck him? Christ I’m sweaty, where’s my friend? Does she know that guy she’s making out with is gay? She and I make eye contact and I giggle into his mouth.

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“I’m Sorry” “I’m Gay” “I Love You” I sit in the surf seething, the water is tumultuous and tinged grey by the sky. I will myself to catch a wave, paddling, paddling, pushing my muscles to do more, to be more, to grow, to change. My friend, his beautiful curly hair trailing behind him, flies by me already gracefully careening on the face of the wave as I rear back terrified. I wish I could be like him. My dad paddles over. He can see the pale sickly tone of my skin, and mouth twisted in a scorn.

“Why am I so shit?” I squawk at him. I’m simultaneously taken aback and enraged by the pitying sadness sprawled across his face.

“It’s alright mate, relax, just try again, no stress.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay, nothing’s fucking okay, alright?” Here come the tears, I blink them back, not now not while he’s right here.

“Mate relax it’s just one wave.”

“You’re such an idiot!” I’m spitting. I feel like a fool and the dumbfounded look on my dad’s face just compounds it.

“Mate, it’s okay. Whatever’s going on, it’s okay.” He’s starting to catch on now. I can see his eyes welling up too, he knows it’s coming.

“I’m fucking gay alright, there.”

Dad paddles over and grasps my hand tight. I see my friend’s curls before his face, he paddles past pretending he didn’t hear and the air is knocked from my chest.

“I’m gay,” I sob, not for my dad, he will love me regardless, but for my friend who chooses not to hear the words that were really meant for him.

I’ve been staring at my phone in the dark for hours now, waiting on his every reply. The sheets feel dirty and scratch at my skin, exacerbating the heart-pounding anxiety. The phone blinks once more to life and I’m thrust back into terror.

“I have feelings for you, like more than friends, I know we’re like brothers and I would never want to ruin that but I had to tell you.”

“Whatever, I mean I’m never going to be into you like that but I guess thanks for letting me know.”

“So nothing will change?” Begging, I feel pathetic.

“I guess not.”

“I love you,” I type eleven times and delete.

I’m captivated by their laughter. I find satisfaction in the burn of unrequited love, the way the fury, sadness and loneliness smoulder in my gut protecting me from the cold of letting go. The way he looks at her both pulls at the tendons between my bones and makes me engorge and harden, imagine if I were her, he touches my leg, holds me close, wants me. I didn’t mean for the can to hit her. I was just aiming for the bin. I smile when it does though, in the most horrifying way. I loved the way the blood crept from her cheek. I feel myself harden again when he looks at her in shock, the way his eyes light up at the prospect of protecting her, protect me instead. The blood rushes towards my

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“I’m Sorry” “I’m Gay” “I Love You” feet as he stomps towards me his curls falling over his face, bottle in hand. He holds it high like a baton. I keep laughing I want him to know this anger. I’m terrified, puffing my chest out like a meek little puffin faced with the talons of an eagle. The bottle comes down on the back of my head and shatters. Pieces of glass fall around me as my vision shakes and the ground rises to meet me. “You’re fucked. You’re so fucked,” I scream as he throws himself on me as fist after fist split open the skin on my face. The pain is allconsuming. Blood runs down my face and blurs my vision. He is silent all I hear is his breath hot and heavy, his spittle sodden with Jack. They pull him off me and I lie there as the ground keeps spinning.

“You could’ve hurt her,” he yells.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Fuck I’m gonna look ugly tomorrow.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m gay.”

“I love you.”

‘MELTING DISCO BALL’ BY ARINA MIZUNO

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‘BRIGHTON BEACH AT SUNSET’ BY SOPHIE SUN

No Wander

BY RUBY PERRYMAN Nana and Pop built a brick shack on the SA seaside where public transport doesn’t exist.

It had roses, lavender, sunflowers, musty floral curtains too, a photo of me as a baby in the bathtub hung in the spare room.

Nana got the Internet on a stick to send us emails but only checked her inbox once a week, the time it takes to receive a paper reply.

Pop didn’t want to learn how to use the keyboard, too busy brewing beer in the shed Nick Cave says he used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world.

I thought so too until I smelt Pop’s permanent marker preserved body in a ring of candles and plastic roses, lavender, sunflowers.

I kissed him on the forehead and he was mushy like blu tack under my lips.

When we first found out he’d died I started to cry and Mum asked “why exactly are you upset, is it because the adults are?”

Pop was in a tin under Nana’s bed with their life savings, they didn’t believe in tax, for a few years until she was gone too.

We spread their ashes together wading in the sea and they stuck to our limbs so we carried bits of them back with us in our leg hair and underneath our toenails like the way I still find my dead dog’s fur on my clothes.

Mum took the photo of me down from the spare room wall ready for a new family to move in.

A man on the tram once said to me “It’d be a crowded world if we all lived forever and imagine all the fucking Collingwood supporters.”

Nana and Pop, loyal to Port Adelaide, would have agreed.

ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

23

Passing Through

BY RUBY PERRYMAN I’m a child of the Ord with feet bare, pruned, seaweed growing from my scalp.

Conceived in a tent on the riverbank and raised in a tin dinghy.

No public transport besides the school bus in my town, you can walk from one side to the other.

Mum took us away when I was ten and a family friend jumped off the balcony at Kununurra District High School.

She says I cried when we sold the four-wheel drive, seems silly considering all cars have four wheels.

Crocs and jellyfish live in the sea in the NT, trips to the beach were sadistic.

Seaweed slipped down the shower drain and my lungs grew green instead.

Darwin buses were always late and smelt like the retirement home we inspected when Pop got sick.

Mum burnt incense every day to make our new place smell like a family.

I was the last of my friends to get my license, kept failing the test because I lack a sense of direction.

This new city is all spit on concrete except for the dirty lake I live beside.

Swam in the creek last month and my toenail got swollen and pusy.

The city is infected with trams.

I catch one to uni, see people in wheelchairs attached to drips smoking ciggies outside Peter McCallum Cancer Centre.

Can’t settle no matter how many times I rearrange the trinkets on my windowsill.

New research says burning incense may cause inflammation of the lungs I may as well revamp my smoking habit.

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ART BY MARGARET LIM

d

r

i

p

BY SARAH BOSTOCK She is buoyant, spinning circles in the grass. It grows ups to her ears now almost and she can smell the dust in the back of her throat. She has pulled the heads off the flowers that grew here, crushed them tightly between fat fingers, thrown them up and catches two of three as they fall back down. There is pollen in her eyes, streaming now.

A taste of musk, she remembers her mother’s warning of cats in the field.

I am sitting in my bedroom trying to taste my spit. Heat at the back of my mouth, tongue pressed to its roof; it feels too small for gums and teeth. I let a tooth rot till my jaw aches then hook it out. The hole bleeds for weeks. My spit tastes bitter now.

We forgot how to swim in three months, dove under water and wondered why there was pressure under our ribs. Blowing bubbles as a chin dips in then out. A breathe of cold air then counting, one and two and three, then turn.

Bath of blood temperature water on heavy legs, magnified in steam. Pushing out my cheeks and slicking down my hair. I look like a mobster with a baby body. Drawing out words I like the sound of on cold tiles while I drip dry. There are no clean towels.

ART BY REBECCA FOWLER

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‘THREAD’ BY RACHEL MORLEY

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A Lovely Face

BY GREER SUTHERLAND

A tower once did, or perhaps someday will, stand on an island known as the island of Shalott. A lady lived in this tower—of course a lady, no-one ever heard of a man living in a tower.

It was not a lighthouse, although there are many towers which are lighthouses. In fact it was a reverse lighthouse. Light came from the outside and into the tower. It might be reasonable therefore to call a reverse lighthouse a shadowhouse.

The Lady existed in a room at the top of the shadowhouse. She wasn’t sure but she thought maybe she had forgotten where the stairs were. It was very safe up in the tower as long as she didn’t look out the window.

(She was not allowed to look out the window!)

She had a mirror, however, which told her all she needed to know about the world, and a loom so that she could create the world again if she wanted to in the tapestry she was always weaving.

If she did look outside, a curse would come upon her—she didn’t know what the curse was, though. A curious thing to note is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is therefore logical to work backwards and to suppose that, for every lady who is cursed, there is an equal and opposite cursing force. The Lady did try to be logical.

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A Lovely Face In America, they have the Statue of Liberty, which shows just how efficient they can be over there. The lady and the tower are packaged up as one.

Something to remember: the Statue of Liberty is, in fact, a statue.

Sometimes The Lady couldn’t believe how many times things happened. For example, knights would ride past outside her tower on horses which were made sometimes of marble and other times of wood. Then they would ride past inside her mirror. Then they would ride past inside her head. Then they would ride past inside her tapestry. If she really wanted to, she could lift up her tapestry and there they would be again, riding past on the tapestry inside the mirror another time. Of course, all this riding past didn’t happen all at the same time, but then again, that was only what The Lady thought. She couldn’t quite tell if it was all one whole thing, or if each riding past should count as its own event.

Her web had to be as big as the world, obviously, in order to fit everything in it. Really it should be bigger than the world because the world kept on changing and The Lady had to keep adding new events. She wasn’t really sure where it all went, somehow the web fit the world inside it, then fit inside the tower. Sometimes she got vertigo.

Inside the web there were people harvesting barley (each wearing their own specialcoloured hat) and the towers of Camelot (which sometimes became the sky then blinked back again), and fields of lilies. The Lady managed to weave every freckle on every lily petal into the web, and tried not to be too sad when she had to weave each flower’s shrinking death a little while later. She had no idea how long she’d been in the tower. She longed to know what a lily would feel like on her skin, if it would just feel like criss-crosses of thread—or perhaps each petal was as smooth as a mirror. Or maybe something else.

It once occurred to The Lady that she could try to coerce her own reflection into cooperating with her in order to escape. If they each turned their own mirror around, the two mirrors would reflect against each other. What two mirrors facing each other would reflect is a mystery. Either The Lady (or the ladies) would have caused destruction by creating a nothingness, or else they would have created an infinity, all on their own.

Maybe the mystery of which they had achieved would be large enough to drown out the curse. The trouble wasn’t so much tricking her reflection, who did everything The Lady mimed to her, but the weight of the mirror. It was as heavy as a black hole, and The Lady was only strong enough to almost lift it. Her reflection tried to help but they couldn’t do it, even together. The Lady kissed her reflection anyway and thanked her for trying. The nice thing about reflections is that they are always as kind to you as you are to them.

FOLLOWING PAGE ART BY WINNIE JIAO

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A Lovely Face The same thing cannot be said of shadows. Sometimes on purple-sweet evenings when The Lady was weaving, her shadow would fall upon her tapestry, twisted and long and unkind. The idea that her shadow was created by her on accident, by her mere existence in the world and without conscious thought, disturbed her. She felt as though she was somehow destroying light but she couldn’t help it. She would look back at the mirror and keep weaving to stop herself from crying.

One time she did cry, and her tears were pure light.

Another time, some years into the curse, a witcher-woman stood outside her window and held aloft one tarot card. It winked into the mirror and The Lady saw it was death backwards. Skeleton embracing the sun.

Our Lady didn’t know what to do so she just created it (the witcher-woman, the card, the skeleton’s tears) again into her tapestry so now there were two deaths.

Eventually the witcher-woman went away, cloak bleeding toad’s bile.

Nobody taught The Lady this but the death card in tarot is not necessarily an omen or a poem sang at the end of life. It can also refer to purity, equality, or the end of an era within the lifespan. In many decks the skeleton carries a sickle and a rose. Rides a horse.

Nobody taught The Lady this either, but at some point it became clear to her that if she placed a candle a little space away from the mirror (say one metre away), then the image of the candle would be two metres from its real, physically-existing twin.

However, one of these two metres was not real space at all. Everything was all so distant.

One day, an event happened, but it never happened in the tapestry. Sir Lancelot rode past, a knight in shining armour upon a horse made of something darker than shadow (perhaps a black hole).

He sang, not a lullaby, but a song which went: tirra lirra. It sounded how she imagined lilies felt.

The Lady watched in the mirror and it occurred to her that she wanted to prise his armour away, even if that meant bloodying her fingernails all the way down. Then she wanted to pump her body against his and let him do the same to her, so that they could become like one burning flame together. His reflection wasn’t enough.

The Statue—the American one—she holds a candle, a light which sometimes is mirrored by the ocean below. She is also trapped on an island, Lady Liberty. The Lady

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A Lovely Face of Shalott would ask a question, if she knew about her sister. Her question would be: in creating the flame, what is the Statue burning?

Sir Lancelot still lived in her mirror, but not her tapestry. She felt her blood run in shivering small circles just beneath her breasts, not frozen but burning, yes, burning.

Dear skeleton, dear sun. Thirteen times over. Was the card really shown to her backwards, or was the mirror right and everything else in the world wrong and reflected?

It was too much. She had to know, she needed to see him. Or maybe she needed him to see her— She left the web? She left the womb?

Another thing she was never taught: photons from the sun, such as those darting into her mirror then her eyes, do not experience time at all—moving at the speed of light, they do not work in the same dimensions of space and time as us.

She looked out the window.

Here is the curse (perhaps): The mirror crack’d from side to side. Outside to inside, or inside to out? Did the glass fall into her tower?

Or did it hail down on Camelot?

Here is the curse (perhaps): The Lady remembered where the stairs were just long enough to find them and run down, then she forgot again.

She still didn’t know what the curse was. But she was also realising for the first time that sunlight is not just light, it is also warmth. Her lungs worked, trying to learn how to breathe.

The Lady stopped where the witcher-woman had revealed death to her, and stooped and kissed the earth where she had stood.

The Lady went and found a boat left afloat upon a river she had been weaving into existence for her entire life. Some lilies grew up out of the riverbank. She picked them and ran them against her fingertips. How unlike mirrors they felt. She gathered them up

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A Lovely Face and clambered into the boat, clutching them to her breast as she lay down. Her shadow lay down too, seeming much kinder than it used to.

Perhaps the boat looked like a coffin, but it felt more like a cradle to Our Lady. So she made sure she sang a lullaby as she cut the cord and was taken by the water.

As she floated along, a pair of hands passed a pair of knitting needles down into the boat.

Photons, not experiencing time or distance, may be able to escape curses put upon them, although this has not been proven.

When she arrived in Camelot she didn’t arrive in Camelot, because she was dead and it wasn’t her at all. It was just her body and her face. But her body and her face had also existed in the mirror for an awfully long time but those reflections still weren’t her.

Events happened so many times (the knights were still riding past in the tapestry) but not at the same time, so perhaps she was still alive somewhere.

The boat came to rest near the royal palace. Photons kissed her face and mourned her body, glimmering against her like a veil. Everyone from Camelot came to gaze upon her.

Sir Lancelot came to see her too. Some of the photons reflected off the face and body and into Sir Lancelot’s eyes, where the energy was transduced and continued along as an electrical signal inside his brain.

The Lady of Shalott existed as nothing more than an image in Lancelot’s head, just as the world had existed for such a long time in her own brain.

Here is the curse (perhaps): He said, “What a lovely face she has.” ~ To be considered ladylike, one must create everything, including destruction.

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‘JAMES TURRELL SKYSPACE’ BY SOPHIE SUN

ART BY LIEF CHAN

the one dimensional girl

BY ELYSSIA KOULOURIS Like branded cattle Like that dirty plate you leave in the dishwasher to wash over and over again Until that chunk of food disappears Until its colourless I, the girl, exhausted OF being stripped of identity Like the red wine imprinted on your lace table cloth bleached Like the way you hold me under your vinegar grip And force me to taste your insecurity until I Let it dissolve onto my tongue and adopt your bitterness I become one dimensional Like spreading butter onto toast which seeps into nothing But the taste. milk The sky cries messily Like the pool I leave in the sink Tap running Tears running Weighing my chest down Brick by brick Raw meat, my eyes asked questions No answer Seeped from me like sap Uncontrollable You injected my milk-like mind with a reality check bathing in my milk-like mind you rinsed my hair clean I looked down at the clear water Disappointed

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Unwanted by what I want Picking at the scab on my fourth finger knuckle until it bleeds Out and evaporates into a memory Of how you were with me Kneading me like dough to behave myself I’m laid out on the kitchen bench for others To admire And you to punish Forget and leave for others to follow

ART BY REBECCA FOWLER

I Would Give You Some Violets

BY EVE ASQUITH

When my nerves had got me by the throat and I couldn’t get out of the car, you grinned in that coy, lightning bolt way of yours and said I’m a patient man. Something like a joke, but not quite. I asked what that made me—an indecisive woman, is what you chuckled.

I always hated that word on your lips. I’d heard from past-lovers that you’d been calling every girl you’d fucked a woman since you were fifteen. Still remember Bec Matheson’s house party in year 10; how you got caught dick-deep in her younger sister and how afterwards, she told us all that you called her a woman who knows what she wants. She was fourteen and wearing a sticky, bubble-gum lip gloss from Dolly magazine. She’d straightened her hair, the frizzy roots beginning to recoil at her scalp, and when she talked to me I felt the need to tilt my head. Careful. Her cruiser breath stuck in my nose and made me think of the lolly shop your mum took us to in Beechworth when we were young and shit like who’s still talking to who didn’t matter.

I’d come home with a jar of raspberry drops and a hot, sticky tongue. The next week of school, I’d shove the sweets in my backpack just to hear the hard sugar tinkle against glass. Pretend I was carrying a pouch of rubies, a sack of gold coins—I could be a rich Catho school girl, jingling and ready to trade her goods at recess. Still remember that dream, too.

“You panicking?”

“No,” I said. “Just need a second.”

“You know,” your fingers thumped the steering wheel. “Men have spent many years waiting a second.” You say it in a faux-sage voice. You say it thinking you’re funny.

‘ULTRAVIOLET’ BY LIEF CHAN

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I Would Give You Some Violets A roll of my eyes and I was out of the car. Didn’t wait for you to follow me in. We were all just kids and I hated you for pretending otherwise. /// Soph used to laugh at us because we were the kind of friends who like to stand still during gigs. Two lone silhouettes, chins tilted towards the stage, arms sometimes crossed, sometimes not—there was no room for dancing. Our bodies weren’t important.

“Whole lot of fun you two are,” she would say, and we would just shrug our shoulders. Glance quickly at each other. I would look you dead in the eye.

For a long time, I couldn’t decide whether you were my brother. I think about those early days when Mum and Shane had their brawls. Think about how I used to hot-foot it round to your house and how Jenny would open your blue door and say Hi there, Charlie. If there was frustration in her greeting, I never noticed. Once, the week before Christmas—the nectarines in your backyard had ripened and the magpies had stopped swooping—she taught me how to make shortbread. Squish the flour into the butter, roll out the dough, pierce the flesh with stars. Lick my hands, even the palms.

“Want the bowl too?” she’d ask, and I would grin, rubbing raw chunks between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

By the time you got back from Auskick, the house smelt like birthday parties and trips to Disneyland. Your mum had left the biscuits to dry on a rack. Your hand reached out and took three. They were eaten and forgotten quickly. /// This particular gig, I wouldn’t be standing still with you. It was a first of sorts. You know how I’m fond of firsts—you had always told me it was too much. Said it’s real weird, Charles. Just relax. I think of this when it’s my turn to head up. Just relax. When the stage lights knock me in the eyes. Just relax. When the crowd falls so quiet that I can hear their elephantine breathing. Just relax. Repeat it like a mantra, even if it’s not in the way you meant it. It’s like the first time I touched you, properly touched you, and we were at the house of one of your fast-paced friends, just home from a night out. I was drunk for the first time, and thought that this giddiness, this ease, must be how normal people feel. I didn’t say this to you. You were rolling papers, bent body, hair collapsing over nose. Come here, you said. Imagined it as, climb into bed. Imagined you had outstretched your arms for me like you would for her. Sat next to you, and when you leaned over to grab a lighter our knees grazed.

I had tried to hold your hand once before; at the back of the netball carparks when it was getting late and the matches had grown sleepy. I was walking ahead, walking too fast. You’ve got a leg on you, you said and I, all stupid and clumsy, reached for your arm to pull you along. I’ll never forget the way you flinched. You think I didn’t notice. Think because you gave my fingers a quick, recovery squeeze. Think because you picked up

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ART BY JEAN BAULCH

I Would Give You Some Violets your pace and said game on, that all went unseen, but I knew. Don’t worry though, no harm done. I know you just didn’t want to hold onto anything, had to make it seem like you were a baby born without a palmar grasp reflex.

Next to the plastic-bottle-bong-lined window-sill, we smoked stolen cigarettes and let our bodies fall, swoosh, onto the bed. I put my head on you, dug my fingers under your collar. It was a loose shirt and easy to slip under; the first few buttons were missing or torn off, I couldn’t tell. You’d shaven your chest hair. I didn’t like that.

Still, I thought the chaos of your friend’s bedroom was romantic. Amongst the used briefs and empty chip packets, he had a clear Sunbeam kettle. It was filled with ants, their little limbs curling inward at the boil. I could imagine the high-pitched, cartoonish intensity of their squeals. Fell asleep thinking about it.

In the morning, we walked down Chrysler St smack bang in the centre of the road.

I carried my jumper by its sleeves, your shoes by their laces; it was something straight out of a ‘60s Mr Whippy commercial. Scruffy fathers on the dole sat in their front yards, their backs against striped camping chairs and chest hair to the street. Defenders of their sun-chapped weatherboard rentals. Occasionally, we’d get a wave.

We cooked bacon in your kitchen, the crispy fat melting across our tongues and nestling into our pores. Your mum saw the shy purple of your hickeys and laughed.

Asked if I had a pair to match. I was proud, even if I didn’t. Tried not to think of the shape of the mouth that gave it to you. /// When you asked me to get friendly with Soph, to be nice to her, I gave you an unimpressed look and made a reluctant deal. Yeah, fine. Started sitting thigh to thigh with the girls—too close for me—and making more eye contact. Tried to look happier, bring my smile to my eyes. Said I like your shoes. Let Soph drag me by my wrist into the bathroom. Fed her precious insights into your childhood, your footy mates, your secrets, your father. We each faced the door while the other pissed—entertained ourselves with the neon graffiti: PETITION TO PLAY MORE CARLY-RAE JEPSEN LICK PUSSY IT’S NUTRITIOUS AND DELICIOUS FUK U TONY ABBOTT Are we friends now that we have shared a cubicle? I thought that was how it worked.

Looked at myself in the mirror, my lipstick all worn off, my eyes gaping holes where a soul should be. Bathrooms were always strange breeding grounds for friendships.

At school swimming, we had used the dingy, outdoor bathrooms as ironic refuge.

An attempt not only to ditch our races, but the wrath of Ms Vergara, whose I hopped through Alice Springs cap seemed uncomfortably casual, even when paired with

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I Would Give You Some Violets her khaki shorts and Birkenstocks. Backs on wall, bums in grass, we would spread ourselves out to eat our dollar sausages-in-bread. The scratchy bricks, all hot from the February heat, nicked pulls in my bathers and made the polyester fluffy. It was a stupid navy one piece that they made us wear. I was all knees and nipples. If I could help it, I would stand with my arms across my chest, baby-bird shoulder blades jutting out. When Ms Vergara caught us—whacked me with her clip board and sent me off with a, you have five seconds to jump into that pool, Charlotte McLaren—I forgot myself.

Stood up without pretence, hands wiping filthy sunscreen grease from the backs of my thighs. Didn’t realise my mistake until I saw the smugness in your mouth. You waited for me to turn around, called out knock ‘em dead, mozzi-bites and the boys lost it. Fell into a raucous, hyena cackle. I told you to piss off— that there were bigger tits to be staring at, and walked quickly to the swimmer’s line-up, passing zinc-nosed kids whose fitful excitement made me hate them as much as I hated myself. My cheeks reddened gloriously and I rode out that euphoria for the entire 100 metre freestyle. By the time I reached the pool’s end, I was sure I was floating. My blood had jumped to the clouds. I could only smell blue. /// Back from the stage, the residue of a tremble still in my bones, you’d left to shout a celebratory round while we bickered in a pleasant frenzy. More people had arrived. This is too much, I thought. They’re my friends, but not like this.

“He looks like a bloody Simpsons character,” Mads had said when you went blue.

“Say what you want,” I told her. “He won’t budge.”

Yes, it looked kind of funny when your hair roots grew back dark, but you were always a terrific talker and so it didn’t matter what names people threw your way, you could dish shit out as well as it was given. Even when some bloke called you on a dodgy paint job, or you ran into some red-faced girl you’d pissed off, you just had to open that rough mouth of yours and that was that. It was a penchant that got you places, you knew this.

It wasn’t until we were all shitfaced and Soph told you that your blue hair would clash with your blue collar that you got touchy. Said, nothing wrong with a little colour, and laughed it off. No big deal. Chucked your fingers through the split-ended, dyed mess and let your touch linger—a self-conscious movement that had escaped you.

When you went off with Juliette from the Catho school, no-one was surprised but it still got us talking. It was two summers after high school and we were restless. I think of Soph’s face that night, all tightly wound and smiling.

“It was expected,” she said and we all agreed. She gave a jaw clenched laugh, sucking the air between her teeth. Mads had it right when she said, it will break her.

She was about to reach for my hand when you made your exhibition. Lifted a glass and said you did good, Charles. Felt Soph’s pale hand shift away. Charles, she mimicked. Smiled from her eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to remind me that I wasn’t one of them. Charles. A nickname you gave me when we were six and I decided

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I Would Give You Some Violets all girls were bitches. We’d bathed my head under the bubble taps that day, palm against scalp, pretending it was holy water and pronouncing me new. I’d followed you everywhere after that. Sometimes, there are days I want to ask you to do it again. But we both know I’d never give you the satisfaction.

That morning, I’d woken up to Juliette in our kitchen. Watched her twist a tea towel between her fingers. Watched her lean into her tip-toes to reach for three mugs, your shirt raising above the double crescent of her arse cheeks. Watched the milk bleed into our morning coffee. Tried not to speak. /// Later, after the crowds dissolved and the chaos began to wilt, we drove to the Reserve with a pack of stubbies each and drank them all. Took it in turns plucking the guitar.

You watched me with a probing eye and I did the same.

“You know,” I said, “you kinda look like a little kid just now.”

Your jester mouth fell straight. We were quiet for a bit, the dank grass seeping into my undies.

“You right?” I asked.

“Yeah yeah,” you said and smiled right at me while my skin peeled back.

ART BY JEAN BAULCH

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smile-gardeners

BY LEILANI WANG

this is air, snatching the held breath

like water and a spring

deluge thick in the soil; boughs are heavy-laden

in heads of blossoms turning to the sun, swept

away now by the verdure.

this is a waiting place: smile-gardeners and their

laced fingers, the rustle of rainwater

against resting souls who cradle each other

with hands that crave the summer sky.

so, not about taking on the world, but about

learning not to suffocate in the unexpected.

survive and so grow stronger—

sundrunk and living, alive.

‘SUBURBAN CINEMA’ BY JEAN BAULCH

I’m a little teacup

BY LUCY WILLIAMS

I was created in a Bethnal Green converted warehouse, in a series of spring evening pottery lessons. Gradually moulded by gentle hands, Patrick Swayze not included.

These gentle, timid hands belonged to Tyrone Fletcher, an overworked administration worker in a stuffy London office. This semester’s classes had been a birthday present from Tyrone’s younger sister Viola.

“You need to get out more,” she would say. “Carol can look after the kids.”

It took a few sessions, but he slowly warmed up to the wheel and my grey clay was thrown and trimmed as Peter, the pottery instructor who played Eric Clapton records on loop, offered advice over his student’s shoulders.

Finally in the second last session, we (the creations) were packed into the boot of Peter’s Kombi van to be solidified in the kiln. The kiln was like an overbearing summer, when you stay as still as possible and end up in a heatstroke daze. Until finally, the first whispers of autumn knock at your door.

At last, the grey stoneware emerged; vases and mugs and an elongated, gigantified (Tyrone assured Peter this was intentional) tea cup, rigid and unmoving to the touch where once they were malleable. Five tube stations wrapped in a woollen scarf and tucked in Tyrone’s messenger bag and I was home.

Instant coffee with three heaped teaspoons of sugar for Tyrone, taken as needed, (which is quite frequently). English Breakfast with ample milk and three heaped teaspoons of sugar whenever Ava wants to be taken more seriously. Ginger and cranberry herbal teas (when in a New Years induced health kick) and stealthily concealed gin and tonics for Carol. Hot cocoa for Nadia.

ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

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I’m a little teacup “It looks interesting. It looks like a teacup except… massive.” Viola twirled me around in her hands.

“Yeah, that’s intentional.”

“Well I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s good for you to meet some new people. You know, get out,” she said placing me down on the bench. “Any cuties in the class?”

“I’m too busy at the moment, you know, with work and looking after the girls.”

Viola smiled to hide her frustration. “Sophie would have wanted you to be happy.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tyrone muttered as his little girls ran into the kitchen to greet their aunt. “VIOLA” they screamed in unison before wrapping their little arms around her.

I was baptised with pinot, alongside Viola’s homemade spaghetti. And then came to be Tyrone’s morning alarm serving caffeine and sugar to his still-dreaming mind. Or other times I was Carol’s, the girls’ nanny and former East London barmaid, disguise for her pre-date courage.

“You should try Tinder, Tyrone. Really, it’s quite good. There’s some wankers but it’s the way of the future, that’s what all the kids are saying.”

And then on special occasions I held Ava’s milky tea or Nadia’s hot cocoa, which was swiftly chugged down before a bedtime story. Then I’d be dropped in a soapy sink, with Fairy liquid foamed to the brim.

Over my years with the Fletchers, I saw them waking at dawn for work or school, kept Ava and Nadia sane through exam study sessions and all-nighters. And the tea parties.

So many tea parties.

Sometimes all four of us. Sometimes just Tyrone and me.

And then one day, he did meet someone.

A lovely someone who came over, first for a coffee and midnight kisses, and stayed over until she seemed like a logical puzzle-piece addition to the family’s life.

The patter of tiny feet heralded the boxing of all the books and crockery and odd bits and bobs. And then they were gone, the boxes in tow, except the one they forgot.

Smith Street Op shop. Cutlery and cookery section, fourth shelf. Coated in dust, with two pound label affixed.

I was only in the cluttered old shop for seven weeks, but that was enough time to spend amongst the ownerless shells of things. Museums of the unwanted, we showed off our best smiles hoping to be chosen by a kind customer.

And then, seven weeks after I was first brought in by an officious real estate agent, it happened. A beady eyed, smiling woman with hair, matted and oily, stroked my handle. She looked shiftily around the busy store and placed me gently in her cavernous coat pocket, taking care not to clink me against its contents.

Lukewarm water from the working tap in Green Park public bathroom for Kit. Kit is his name from Pauline. Kit’s other name is Pascal, which was given to him by the new organic café on the corner of George and Chetwynd Streets.

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ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

I’m a little teacup Pauline, my rescuer, added me to her small collection of bowls and dishes and cups which she kept next to her blankets and sleeping bag. At night we would all cuddle up and Pauline would be joined by Kit who snuggled into her, shielding her from the cool air. Kit was a ginger longhair cat. His owners, unbeknownst to Pauline, were the managers of the new café on the corner, that sold deconstructed versions of old-school staples at an exorbitant price point.

During the days, Pauline would wander the surrounding streets leaving water for her furry friends like Kit. This is how I made me way to the cobbled backstreet of Forest Lane. Pauline left me with a stray black cat with luminous grass green eyes, having filled me and raced back before he could leave. Once Pauline was out of sight, he sniffed at me, gulped a mouthful of water and went on his merry way.

A mere two hours later, I was picked up by Leonard, a tradie exiting a client’s house.

As his co-worker Bruce collected him in the company van, he brandished me, now emptied, and grunted, “Look what I found.”

“You know we can’t just steal stuff from clients mate?”

“No it was on the ground.”

“Maybe it’s for someone’s pet?”

“Bloody posh thing for an animal,” Leonard reasoned, stuffing it in his backpack.

After his working day had ended, Leonard took me to the pawn store. It appeared Leonard had honed his bullshitting skills because the store owner recognised him immediately. He explained that I was a one-of-a-kind find from an up and coming potter and after the suspicious manager offered ten quid, he realised he wasn’t gonna get much more and left me. Again in a place of things that had been discarded.

Until Jenny. Floaty, airy Jenny and her strict, severe sister.

Just for display, safely locked behind cabinet windows. Although I did get to smell wood polish every second Sunday. Polishing Sunday was my favourite. Polishing Sundays, all the plastic came off the couch and fumes from the waxy spray would make their way through the slit in my cabinet’s doors. Until Vera started to worry that it could be toxic.

Vera didn’t like me from the beginning. I was gifted by her free-spirited sister who didn’t worry about cleanliness or anything sensible. Jenny did also make the mistake of telling her hyper-controlled sister that I was a pawn store find. Luckily she didn’t know about my dealings with stray cats or else I would have been well and truly in the bin.

Once in a blue moon, the protected dome of control in which Vera operated, would be hijacked by her hippie sister or by her unconventional son.

Timothy was a lanky, focused chiropractor. He possessed strains of his aunt’s flexibility, but retained his mother’s coldness. One day, during one of his visits, he spied (with his little eye) me, just minding my own business.

He knew his mother would never use me, and so took it upon himself to take me off her hands.

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I’m a little teacup Protein shakes for Timothy every morning after a gym session. I watched him make these in the blender. A viscous combination of pea protein powder (because he’d yell at Imogen if she bought whey), carob powder, matcha powder, bruise-less bananas and a splash of almond milk. It didn’t taste much better than that sounds. For Imogen, a green smoothie after her morning run; delicately sliced cucumber and celery, apple and spinach stuffed in, with pineapple for sweetness.

What first came across as an aloofness or indifference in the passing moments I’d observed him previously, I could now see was Timothy’s detachment from the feelings of others. Like his mother’s furniture, that was separated from every tiny morsel of oxygen by a thick plastic film, he had been suffocated. And, if he managed to relate to those around him at all, it was at a distance.

He and Imogen were a surprising pair, they didn’t seem to have much in common apart from their dedication to blending overly healthy smoothies before I’d had time to properly wake up.

She was different when he wasn’t around, jovial and chatty with her friends who came around. But she loved him, and he seemed to love her. But while I have long observed humans, I am not well acquainted with all of their ways.

He first brought her home on his lunchbreak. I imagine they met up at other times, when he called to say he had to work late or when he had spontaneous work trips.

Imogen didn’t seem awfully upset by his absence, if anything she was relieved, but love isn’t always straightforward and good, it can be tied up in knots and stained with imperfections that just won’t budge.

The day Imogen almost threw me was no exceptional day, except for the fact that she forgot her phone.

I heard her keys hastily open the door, and her out of breath call to Timothy that she’d just forgotten something. I was on the kitchen table, they had left me in peace but I remained lipstick-stained, a prime piece of evidence of their infidelity Sometimes green smoothies, and sometimes hot chocolate and sometimes Pimm’s with freshly picked strawberries from her new neighbour.

Timothy left me with Imogen. Perhaps he felt I had betrayed him or perhaps he had clued into my potential use as a weapon. Either way, it was a more peaceful house without him.

After a few chaotic weeks, Imogen would actually get up in the morning and smile, open the windows wide and let the day in. Her friends came over more, and she’d invite her neighbour Mrs Evans over for hot chocolate or a cheeky Pimm’s.

She changed gyms so she didn’t bump into him again, and she was working hard for a promotion at work.

Life was good.

And then. There’s always an and then.

It was around six months later, but it seemed much sooner. I was chilling with Imogen and some hot chocolate, she was scrolling through social media when I felt her hand tense. Her brow furrowed and she typed furiously.

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I’m a little teacup Her phone blared with that hideously disquieting shriek.

“Hey, have you seen his profile.”

Muffled, slow replies.

“I just can’t compute, like, ughhhh.” She started spilling, but from her eyes.

Her best friend Carly came over that night. They had Chinese takeout in cardboard boxes that looked like lanterns. We reassured her that he had been such a dick and it was his loss.

“Who would get engaged to someone who willingly eats carob in his smoothies?”

“I mean, I almost did.”

“Yes, but you had the good sense to ditch him at the curb.”

They watched Friends reruns, and blasted old records through the apartment.

And then Imogen looked at me.

“I just need to get rid of his stuff.”

If only ceramics could get goose bumps. The idea that I supposedly belonged to him, that I carried him with me however much I hated him, made me chip myself.

Timothy would never accept a chipped teacup, I thought. But as it turned out, I wasn’t going back to him.

Dense soil, and a pigface cutting from the community garden, adorned with a large yellow flower on its crown.

“Aw you’re quite a sweet little thing aren’t you,” she cooed as she packed soil into me. It was a fresh, earthy taste. Although I left most of it for my new friend.

Sunny the Scarecrow did not speak, but he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Carly said that he was called Pigface, but Imogen and I just used his other name which we found on Wikipedia.

“There has to be a nicer name for it, poor little thing.”

And so we settled on Sour fig, which was a bit fancy and less offensive.

“I thought you were getting rid of it?” Carly sang out from the lounge, where she was stuffing her backpack with Timothy’s collection of never-read-but-make-me-lookintelligent books.

“Yeah, I’m giving it to my granny. We’re all having Christmas at hers this year.”

My last few days with Imogen, she played Michael Bublé as she rolled out gingerbread on her kitchen island. She’d bought a beautiful pine tree that had fragranced the entire house. This meant that the scent of burning gingerbread wasn’t immediately obvious, but when it was, Imogen rushed, cursing, to the oven and retrieved her burnt, smoking biscuits.

She had more luck with her casserole of roasted vegetables, which she was taking just in case her grandma served her another “almost vegetarian” dish of bacon stuffed quiches.

And so we were all packed in her backseat. The dozens of presents wrapped in newspaper and tied with frayed string were piled high in the back, her casserole in the front passenger seat. Sunny and I were placed on the fuzzy ledge, above all the presents, where we could see all the other cars chasing us to their Christmas

60

I’m a little teacup destinations. Sunny was looking a little worse for wear from the winter cold, but his wilting petals were just holding up.

We popped into a local bakery from which Imogen emerged with a cellophane wrapped basket of unburnt gingerbread people decorated with pearlescent baubles, ivory icing and gumdrops.

Then we were on our way.

The roads were busy with the festive rush of cars, but in the hope that Father Christmas would leave something this year they were being more polite than usual. The Michael Bublé marathon continued and Sunny and I even spotted a dashboard Elvis who waved back.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

The car lurched sideways, rocking Sunny and I over as soil sprinkled across the backseat.

Imogen was whirling the wheel but it was unyielding. From upside down, it was hard to make out the car that ran into our side but we heard Imogen scream.

Cr us hed gin gerbread was scattered across asphalt , with jAgge re d streamers of cellophan e. Soil h ad flo wn in to the air and s eemed to carpet ev erything in the vicinity.

I coul N’ T see IM0g en Su nny’s golden petals

were lifeless against the road

t HE chri stmas pre sents stre Wn across the hIGhway neW s paper shredded on ImPACT aNd M e a

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I’m a little teacup l 1TTLe Tea Cup F rac tur ed, sh atte red Pow de red, br okENn

Wh en 1 first came into the world 1 came 2 0bserve human5 C Am e to

observe life

I’m taken away, in little plastic baggies B y sireeeeeeeeeeening cars no longer an observer of life Of ImO0000g en O f T y r o n e Of stray

cats and gin and tonic,

but evidence of it.

62

ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

64

‘SPRING CLEANING’ BY WINNIE JIAO

op(

) shop

BY NATALIE FONG CHUN MIN

does not take much for her to look like a piece of discounted house ware, sitting among dull, mismatched furniture in a secondhand store, wondering which of them were likely to have owners who would’ve been jealous of her – the weaker gentler parts of her that shook when she moved with an intense bleak oblong sort of borderlessness bookended only by these recycled faux-leather hips: the kind of furniture that reads her body language (exactly as she pictured herself read by kindred strangers) bell-clinking patrons come and go and bestow upon her concern that tastes like cement, (she had long suspected was pooling in his gap teeth) or charity, faintly like blood, (she had long known the terrors he masqueraded as his antics) deceptively blue, (she had longhand notes on ratios of paint needed to

paint a sky – his) like the haves and have-nots of a pen, leaking unnoticed. of what she could not name, things that sat on her skin, mortal and volatile: two thousand and eighteen volumes of fatigue, of big-boned humanity indenting, making a mark on her (marking her), ticks and crosses of a bingo-less love, sticky heat busying themselves with its new prey – this girl trying to run from the acute awareness of owning a tongue not hers to own, (did she have to return it into the tongue of tonguess at some point in time) lolling like old sponges in her collectible mouths, russet like foreign evenings, fragile like wombs nonetheless proud of being sore. and still she sits, tucks herself into a tray of his cigarettes, where he’s hidden (been hiding) vestiges of himself, now abandoned in the name of quitting something that is bad for him, she will de( ) as soon as she feels he’s no longer

66

ART BY REBECCA FOWLER

67

CW: sexual harassment and homophobia

Shame/Pride

BY NICK PARKINSON

1. McKinnon, Victoria. February 2009.

I painstakingly write this letter with my left hand. I’ve broken my right arm playing tennis.

My pen labours across the page, yet I’m the first to finish in my class. I have nothing else to say. * Five years later, on graduation day, I open the envelope. My friends ask to read the letter. I tell them I was sick the day we wrote them. * Today it sits in my bedside drawer, scratching the wooden insides with angry handwriting. I keep the drawer shut and let it damage the varnish.

Shame/Pride 2. Shame.

In Humiliation, Wayne Koestenbaum confesses that, in seventh grade, he “jerked off for hours without stopping [until his] swollen penis looked like a dreidel”. I’d use the descriptor “witchetty grub”, not “dreidel”, but the point still stands. For me, like for Koestenbaum, masturbation paves the highway of shame.

3. East Brighton, Victoria. July 2007.

“Nick, can you come downstairs?” Mum shouts.

I remain silent. If I don’t respond, maybe she’ll let it go.

“Nick?”

I punch my pillow.

I forgot to delete my browsing history. The incriminating terms reel through my mind. “Gay.” “Monster cock.” “Does rubbing toothpaste on your penis really make you hard or was my friend lying to me?”

I shudder and curl into a ball.

What will Mum say?

We never speak about it.

4. Pride.

In her history of Mardi Gras, Mia Sanders writes that Pride began as a “defiant, political rebellion”. Pride, for me, is a much smaller act of rebellion than insurgency at Stonewall.

Pride is using a headshot in a Tinder profile. Pride is singing (or wailing) ‘On My Own’ from Les Mis, even when Mum’s home. Pride is making eye contact with men. Pride is nuzzling my head into my boyfriend’s neck on the 64 tram. Pride is comfort.

5. Glen Waverly, Victoria. February 2011.

“I think gay people should be allowed to get married,” Harvey* says.

I hold…

my…

breath.

I’ve known Harvey since I was six weeks old. He’s the reason I barrack for St Kilda. Before he moved to Glen Waverly, I’d go to his house weekly to play Shrek 2 on PlayStation.

Harvey’s family is Catholic—the “Sundays are church days” type of Catholic—and so I’ve always assumed he’d find same-sex marriage distasteful, like bringing durian to a party or farting on a plane.

“But,” he continues, “I don’t think they should be allowed to adopt. Children deserve a mother and father.”

I nod, agreeing.

And what if, deep down, I do agree?

*All names in this piece have been changed for privacy.

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Shame/Pride 6. A football oval, Victoria. September 2012.

Ben scooches over in his sleeping bag.

He’s two-and-a-half-years older than me. My role-model. That’s why I’ve agreed to join his relay team. We’re running to raise money for charity. I suspect our team cares more about winning than charity.

I feel Ben begin to rub me through my sleeping bag. I freeze. I’ve never been kissed.

Intimacy terrifies me. I still shake when I masturbate and cry after watching porn.

(Between tears and semen, I’m a real asset to the tissue industry.)

I’m hard, so I must be enjoying it. But I’m sick with fear about the other boy who’s asleep in the opposing corner of the tent.

Suddenly, I have to pee.

“Ben,” I whisper. “I need the bathroom.”

I get up and tiptoe to the portaloos that pockmark the oval. Floodlights hunt me in the gloom. A volunteer waves my way lethargically. I wonder if she knows what I did.

What I am.

I wait in line at the portaloos. It’s e x c r u c i a t i n g.

Back in the tent, Ben feigns sleep. He wriggles about, fighting the nylon of his sleeping bag. I curl myself into a corner.

I want to shower. * Dawn offers peace as normality resumes. I try catching his eye, but he avoids my gaze. * We win.

I feel hollow. * I message him days later.

15 September 2012. 1:31am.

Nick: Hey Ben. Nick: How are you feeling? My legs are ruined.

15 September 2012. 1:56am.

Nick: Did you want to talk about the other night?

Seen. 15 September 2012. 2:03am.

17 September 2012. 4:45pm.

Ben: Hey! Yeah, shattered. Slept a solid twelve hours once I got home.

Ben: Let’s just forget about the other night, yeah?

Ben: Just a bit of fun between two buds.

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Shame/Pride * The ‘fun’ with Ben continues for years, surviving the cycle of blocking and unblocking. In fact, it still does.

I often shake so much that the nudes I send him blur and look like poor imitations of Shinseungback Kimyonghun’s portraits.

I’m not proud of what we’ve done, of what we do. Even all these years later, I clean up, cry, and reach for another tissue.

It’s shame, the burning kind that sits acerbic on your tongue, parches your throat and blisters your gut.

ART BY RACHEL MORLEY

71

Shame/Pride 7. Interpellation.

I often wonder where this shame comes from. My family are so unphased by my sexuality that when I came out to my brother, he just grunted, “Yeah I know. Move out the way: I’m playing FIFA.” (I discovered later that my parents had already warned him of my penchant for penis, so I suppose that my HUGE revelation wasn’t that huge after all.)

So, curious, I turn to the admittedly abstract annals of psychoanalysis to trace the root of my guilt.

I find answers in a politics class where my Nike sneakers attract disdained looks.

We read Althusser. He writes that “All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects.”

Something clicks, and I realise that all this time I’ve been hailing the taxis of bigotry and just going along for the ride.

8. Aranda de Duero, Spain. March 2017.

In December 2016, I move to Spain to teach English. I need to get away from Australia and start afresh.

I’m placed in a small town called Aranda de Duero in the heartland of the country’s Bible Belt. It’s isolated (closest Tinder match at 112km) while still being Western enough for comfort (there’s a Macca’s).

In March, I find a pamphlet in my mailbox. It reads, “Do you know what they want to teach your child at school? The laws of sexual indoctrination.” Inside its forty-one pages, it promotes conversion therapy and decries homosexuality as unnatural.

Later in the year, during the plebiscite, photos of similar pamphlets disseminated in Melbourne appear on my newsfeed.

They pinch at my heart like the Spanish pamphlets do.

The front page of the pamphlet delivered to my mailbox. It reads, “Do you know what they want to teach your child at school?

The laws of sexual indoctrination”

Posters plastered around Melbourne.

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Shame/Pride 9. Aranda de Duero, Spain. April 2017.

We run every day except Friday. Quarter-past seven until nine. It’s another constant, a downbeat, in my daily rhythm.

Only one girl trains with us. Her name, like many of my students, is María. (I like to imagine this is part of a coordinated Christian plot to make this generation of women as virginal as their namesake.)

María and I are both injured, so today we warm up without the boys. I’m relieved.

I’ve had a bad day. One student called his Moroccan classmate a racist slur. Another fled from class through the window. A third asked solemnly if he could masturbate while I explained relative clauses. I lost my temper. I don’t like shouting, but it’s become a mainstay of my teaching method.

María runs along and chatters effortlessly besides me. By “effortless” I don’t mean graceful. She has the upper-body of a swimmer, not a runner. Her arms move in angry circles, like she’s pummelling a punching bag. I struggle to keep pace as her stout legs tick over rapidly. I mention the pamphlet I found last week.

“Sí. It is awful gay people have to deal with mierda like that.”

She goes on to tell me about a kid who was beaten up beside the train tracks a month ago because of a rumour he was gay. The story stings but it’s not the worst one she tells me as we circle the same football field, over and over.

“There’s this guy I know. He comes out to his parents and they disown him. No speaking, nothing. Then, his mum gets cancer. Bad cancer. What’s the word again?”

“Terminal?”

“Yeah, terminal. Anyway, she still doesn’t speak to him. He wants to see her before she dies, but she remains silent. Not a word. Nada. Can you imagine that?”

I can’t. I just shake my head and pick up the pace.

10. Bilbao, Spain. April 30th, 2017.

It takes a moment to realise where I am as my eyes adjust to the half-light of predawn.

Not my bed.

Not my home.

I become aware of another presence beside me. * José. I couldn’t find a hostel last night, so I turned to CouchSurfing. José, a thirty-six year old professor, offered to host me.

I was worried when I arrived and saw no couch, but he made me dinner, was sociable and the bed was big.

I’ll be fine. If he gets creepy, I can leave.

We fell asleep pressed against opposing ends of the mattress, my leg dangling over the edge to further widen the gaping space of silence dividing us. *

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Shame/Pride I hear a rustle and the mattress creaks. I tense but remain motionless. I breathe louder, pretending to be asleep.

I feel him touch me.

I am too scared to cry out.

The rain buckets down outside. I suppose it must be around 4am.

I can’t leave.

I make a show of waking up and head to the toilet. There I begin to message my friend, then realise that maybe he’ll judge me because maybe it’s my fault I’m in this situation and maybe I could have avoided this and God, oh God, maybe I wanted it and maybe I’m filthy and maybe that’s why I didn’t leave when I realised there was no couch and why, even now, I haven’t left. I leave the message unsent and return to the bed, hoping José will leave me alone now it’s clear I’m awake.

He doesn’t. * The rain doesn’t stop all day. An angry, unrelenting deluge typical of the Basque Country. It reminds me of my childhood in Singapore, when I would strip naked to shower in the midday thunderstorms. I used to get nude an awful lot. Mum tells me that I would pull down my pants in the middle of the street to embarrass my sister. Now it’s only me who I embarrassed when I get naked. * After breakfast, I hurry out of José’s home and hole up in a café to escape the rain.

There I open my diary and write. Twelve pages of automatic, terrible, Tumblr-worthy poetry. I don’t even like poetry, but its ambiguity is the bulwark I need right now. My handwriting is robotic. I try not to feel.

74

Shame/Pride * I catch a cab to the Guggenheim and spend seven hours inside before they shoo me out.

I only remember one artwork. A silent short film. Untitled (Human Mask) by Pierre Huyghe. A Japanese landscape scarred by the Fukushima nuclear disaster waits restlessly. We aren’t sure what or who for. A deserted restaurant’s only tenant is a monkey. It plays with dolls for company, head twitching nervously as it fidgets. It begins to clean, performing a routine though no-one is watching.

I also don’t know what I’m doing here.

11. Aranda de Duero, Spain. May 1st, 2017.

I return from Bilbao and can feel a cold brewing in my sinuses. A punishment for yesterday’s sins perhaps.

Josefa, my host mum, waits for me, smoking in her floral dressing gown. Her youngest son, Juan, spills a plate of garbanzos as I walk in the door. “¡Qué maricón!” Josefa’s scolds, cleaning up the spilt garbanzos.

I’m used to Josefa’s odd outbursts, but I’d not expected this. Maricón: it’s a slur I’ve heard all too much in Spain. A colleague once yelled “¡maricón!” at a smart-ass student.

Its use is so common that I check the translation with a colleague. She confirms my suspicions: “It’s the same as ‘faggot’ in English.”

Josefa, therefore, has just said to her youngest, plate-dropping son, “You’re such a faggot!”

I decide to say something.

“Isn’t that word ofensivo?”

She laughs.

“Not if you don’t get offended. After all, it’s only a joke and doesn’t matter because Carlos isn’t gay.”

12. Aranda de Duero, Spain. July 2017.

I look to my right to locate the culprit. There he is with a dopey grin and a water pistol. I drunkenly push him.

“Oi, tío, I’m fucking soaked.”

He laughs, running his hands through a thick crop of dark hair.

“Tranquilo, my friend. It’s just water. I’m Pablo,” he says, offering a hand.

Some people can refuse handshakes. I’m not one of those people. I take his clammy hand. I’m heady from all the tinto de verano and its effervescence bubbles up to my mouth, spilling over into a smile.

“Nick,” I reply. * I lead him down to the river where it’s darker and quieter. He leans in for a kiss. He’s pretty horrible really: all teeth and angry, sharp bites. I feel like I’ve absconded with a German Shepherd rather than a person. A feeling of wrongness plagues me.

75

Shame/Pride Why are we hiding? More importantly, what will happen if we’re found?

He pushes me back and I breathe for air.

“Nick, you are my first kiss.”

I smile. He doesn’t want to hear my answer, so I don’t let the silence linger. I pull him closer for another kiss.

He stops me.

“Quiero decir… well, w-with a boy. You know?”

“Oh? Really,” I pretend to act interested. But I’m not. (I’d blame the alcohol though it’s probably me. My ex once said, “I’ve never met anyone as selfish as you.”)

“This means a lot to me,” Pablo says.

I don’t tell him I’ve forgotten his name. I pull him into a hug and think about how here, in this town, I’ll head home and lie to my host family about the hickey he’s left me.

13. Granada, Spain. December 2017.

Australia has passed same-sex marriage. My friends take to the streets armed with glitter. Their rainbow flags festoon my newsfeed with colour. I wish I were home to celebrate with them.

It’s the first time I feel proud.

14. Brugges, Belgium. January 2018.

I download Grindr again. I normally last around two weeks until the ickiness of the whole thing curdles my blood with shame and I delete the app.

What would Mum think if she knew that I’d decided to meet up with a guy from my hostel?

He is nice, and I get drunker than I planned. Belgium beer is potent and, like recentlytrimmed pubic hair, creeps up on you faster than expected.

He takes me to his room. I consider running away while he gets a condom.

“I’m not sure this is the best idea.”

“It’s a hostel; no-one cares.”

“Look, I’m really sorry but I’m just not comfortable doing anything while there are people in your room.”

“Okay.”

He drags me to the showers and I keep my mouth shut.

Someone walks in on us.

My gut heaves. I want to scream, to flee.

The intruder joins us.

I’ve never felt so unsexy in my life.

I can’t sleep that night.

I delete Grindr and check out before dawn.

76

Shame/Pride 15. East Brighton, Victoria. April 2018.

I seek advice from a friend now I’m home. They live in Spain and are the first person to whom I confess a loathing for my own gayness.

“Have you ever doubted your self-worth because of your sexuality or gender?” I ask them over the phone.

“Not with my sexuality. I don’t feel any qualms about that.”

Maybe it’s just me then, that hates this so much, I think.

“And your gender?”

“I’ve never questioned my legitimacy or validity. But, yeah, I’ve wished that I could just turn it off. My life would be easier if I could pretend and say, ‘I’m a woman and that’s that’. But I can’t. This is me.”

Perhaps then, I’m not alone in my dissatisfaction.

But my friend is right, of course: pride begins when we accept that “This is me”.

16. Somewhere. The future.

77

‘HOLLOW VICTORIA’ BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

80

‘MERMAID EMBRYO’ BY WINNIE JIAO

You carry yourself like a whisper riding a soft wave, speaking into the eager ears of conch shells. Be careful, for they are as fragile as porcelain. You are like the stained glass of church windows, radiant and pulsing with beauty.

Here is enor mous wit kept at bay, stored in a mind quick as light ning. You hide t h e storm-clouds well. Are your tears like rain? Are your thoughts thick like fog?

You are like grey smoke breathing from volcanic bonfires-that curling stuff clinging to bedclothes, sheets. You blind inno cent eyes before trans forming them into marble spheres. You are strong a n d smooth-very few realise the stone of your skin is

a fake artefact.

You’re still here, but the lightning has disap peared. You regurgitate pools of oil shimmer ing like scales and wait for somebody to slip on its dark, slick mess. Please, let your victims find a handhold, a rope of some sort.

‘YOU/I’ BY JAMISYN GLEESON

81

PASSENGER

BY QUINN BADER

FEBRUARY Fleecy, grey upholstery. A canopy of plastic flowers hung from the passenger’s seat sun visor, and I had to duck not to knock them down. I lifted my feet awkwardly; I didn’t want to crush her belongings. They seemed to be a heap of geometry homework, old fast food containers, and moth-gnawed hoodies.

Virginia turned to me from the driver’s seat. I don’t remember exactly what she said first, but when I think back to our first meeting and try to smooth over the empty spaces, I like to imagine it was, “Hold on tight.”

She said she knew she was a reckless driver, and I buckled my seatbelt.

Had I ever gone 100 miles per hour before? Surely not on the turnpike. You know, she was always good at avoiding speeding tickets. And she couldn’t believe how bright the moon looked tonight. Sometimes she wished it would just absorb her. The car lurched to a halt thirty feet into the red light. Virginia didn’t flinch. How was the props team this year? She loathed being banned from the drama club. Nepotism. School bored her half to death, and now that she’s thinking about it, she never really learned to read, so maybe that was it. She was a big fan of the chocolate milk they sold at the Walmart self-checkout, and her boyfriend was a douchebag. He always seemed to make her feel trapped in her own body. Did I know I’m a really patient listener? She said she needed that. Especially today. We’re here.

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PASSENGER We got milkshakes. Virginia climbed up onto her car roof. Nobody explained why she was part of our post-rehearsal food fleet if she’d been kicked out of the club; I didn’t ask. The girl scared me, but I was drawn to her. Something about the way she moved made being around her feel like we were on stage. Theatrics. I hoisted myself onto the car.

“What’s your sign?” she asked.

I thought. “Taurus.”

Her lips curled into a wildfire smile.

“Me too. You know, I’ve never met a Taurus that couldn’t tie a cherry stem into a knot with their tongue.”

“Now you have,” I chuckled. She frowned.

“Watch.”

She pulled the cherry out of her milkshake and put it in her mouth. I raised my eyebrows.

“Yeah, it’s not magic. Gimme a minute.”

I turned back to the crowd and listened while the usual gripes about our director were thrown around.

Slowly, the conversation lulled, but there was no tension. Virginia turned and looked at me with the cherry stem still in her mouth.

“You’re green. Your aura, it’s a pastel green.”

“Is that a compliment?” I asked her.

“No, that’s just what it is.”

She smiled and shrugged, sliding through the sunroof and back into her seat. I followed.

“I’m going to head home. Where do you live?” she asked. We pulled out of the lot, and she turned up the radio, rolling down the windows letting her hair blow around the car. She sang like I wasn’t there.

I nuzzled into the passenger’s seat, and we pulled up to a red light. She stuck out her tongue. Knotted.

JUNE By the start of the summer, I had Max and I lay, legs splayed across the backseat with my head in his lap, as Virginia drove to the local swimming hole. It had once been a granite quarry, but construction halted back in the ‘60s and it had since filled.

The quarry had become Laurel County public pool’s toughest competition amongst teenagers, and the three of us were buzzing for the summer’s inaugural swim. The sun fell in through the backseat windows and flickered, the way it only can on a midsummer day in Kentucky, as we ducked through the trees.

‘Highway 51’ played stage to our summer’s birth.

It had been a hot June, and the makeup of Virginia’s car reflected it. Beach towels and a box of sidewalk chalk sat at Max’s feet. Blue Bell ice cream cone wrappers, the chocolate dipped kind, naturally, and a box of fifty-cent smoke bombs and sparklers

83

PASSENGER from the convenience store lay at mine. I knew we’d find out what she had planned for them soon. It was never any use asking.

I dozed off and the CR-V swept up the highway. Virginia had named the car Rosemary.

To her, the herb symbolised good fortune, so she always kept a sprig on the dash. It baked into the seats.

The passenger’s side lay empty. Virginia’s eyes were locked ahead on the road and she sipped yesterday’s warm iced tea from a swirly straw, carefully turning up the radio, not quickly enough to wake us in the back. She’d become a better driver since we met. If she dyed her hair, I would have believed she was my mother ten years earlier.

NOVEMBER I was stacking my plates by the sink when Virginia called.

“Feeling angsty tonight?”

I cackled. “Always.”

“See you in a few.”

This was a strategy we’d worked out together for when something was gnawing at us.

I’d always relished the night. It meant there was no-one telling you what to do until the sun came over the hills. For Virginia, night meant being invisible. On the road she was anonymous. She could be anyone, so, in those moments, she chose to be herself.

I declared Auntie May champion of the Thanksgiving dessert competition for the third year in a row and doled out the necessary few goodnight hugs before leaving through the garage. The headlights peeked through the window and Virginia flashed her brights twice. I grinned. She’d already been here when she called.

V pulled out of the driveway and sighed.

She couldn’t wait until the end of her first semester at the community college.

Somehow the counsellor had convinced her to take French again and she was halfsure she was accidentally enrolled in Finnish because it all sounded like gibberish. She couldn’t find a job, and she didn’t want to work in fast food anymore after the horrors of the Long John Silver’s freezer. Her dad was asking for rent now that she was in college and she didn’t want to disappoint him this time. Anyways, she was pretty much out of money, so she figured she’d run it down to zero just so there was nothing left to mock her.

We were in the woods now.

Could we roll down the windows and scream?

84

‘ARTS CENTRE’ BY SIMON CLARK

PASSENGER That was nice.

We passed into town, then out of it just as fast; Virginia pulled behind an abandoned service station.

“Came here when I was really little. Mom would take me before she left. Used to be a putt-putt course.”

She pulled a bag from under her seat and slammed the door. The bag clanked.

“Dollar store has the best cheap cups around. If I get an apartment, that’s where I’m going to buy everything. Catch.”

She tossed me a ceramic mug.

“What for?”

“This.”

She reared back. The cup shattered against the concrete.

“Feels fucking good.”

APRIL “So, Corey and I had sex,” she dropped nonchalantly.

“Oh my god. When? You didn’t tell me. Rate out of ten?”

“Last night. Uncomfortable.”

“Oh, shit. That sucks.”

V took the river road down to the train trestles. The bridge crossed the narrow body of water that bordered the east side of town, where the high school rowing team practised. We’d sometimes come to watch them from under the support beams.

We got out of the car and started walking up to our spot.

“He keeps texting me about yesterday. I don’t want to talk. He can fuck right off.”

“Yeah,” I echoed. “If you need space, you need space.”

“He told me he loved me afterward.”

“What’d you say?”

She stopped walking and looked across the bridge, then tilted her head toward the water.

“I jumped.”

Virginia watched my changing expression and smiled. I could tell she was proud of herself for the theatrics, and probably also for getting the whole thing off her chest.

Nobody ever jumped, but I knew she wasn’t joking.

“Let’s get my bra back and I’ll go break up with this schmuck.”

86

PASSENGER JULY Someone rear-ended her Rosemary on the parkway, and she’d slid into a ditch. The car was totalled.

Virginia and I spent the next afternoon at the junkyard, combing through the backseat and trunk for anything of value.

She’d been good to us, we agreed. Real good.

AUGUST We sat in my car in the Waffle House parking lot and played our favourite songs. She cursed at me for not having any tissues and wiped her running eyeliner onto her hoodie sleeve. We both laughed and for the first time since we’d met, it felt forced.

Virginia was quiet on the way home. Every mile or so, she’d crank the radio volume higher until I couldn’t have heard myself shout if I tried, but when I dropped her off we sat for a few minutes in silence before she got out.

I headed north the next morning. College was starting on Monday. The culmination of everything I’d been working towards in school was on the horizon, and I felt acutely alone for the first time in years.

I’d come back at Christmas and see Virginia waiting in my driveway. She would always be the home I’d left. To me, she embodied the South, although she’d vehemently reject the label. It was the way she existed in the swaying of the poplars, the warmth of the evening wind, and the unwillingness to plan too far ahead.

But things were going to be different and I’d be foolish not to admit it.

I would change with the seasons, but she would be stuck in Nowhere, Kentucky paying off the new car that didn’t smell like rosemary.

She would always be the home I’d left.

87

my poems are Melbourne trains that never leave quite on time

BY TASNIM TAHRIN

i see the silhouette of an old train carriage in tunnelled light, where life is like the inside of a tuna can:

not warm, not cold,

bodies exactly in the midst of not feeling anything

i have high hopes for everything, for mesmerising eyes to hold me, and laughter, the kind that shows teeth

i wait for that exquisite moment

a spatula melting at the edge of a frypan

i want that

quiet sizzle

that permeates everything

i can write for half an hour before

i get stuck, before it feels like

there’s a nail drilling into the edges of my skull trying to

bleed an empty space, to collect sap from a burning tree

i feel superbly

nothing,

and never surer of my own inadequacy

i watch the fire burn until September when petals reach their holy peak

of pink, and the back of my eyelids

reveal mahogany,

until my lips harden to amber – bright, aged and senseless, a stone to be clutched

in the palm of a curious child, inviting enough for critics and lovers alike i wave goodbye to the old me at the end of each line, watch each thought speed by like a train running two, three minutes late

88

‘ANXIETY’ BY ELSA RAMIREZ

ART BY CHIDO MWATURURA AND RUKAYA SPRINGLE The image is a digital re-animation combining elements of drawing and photography.

We see our subject is in a classic ‘stressed-out-student’ pose. She is pondering about how to continue to decolonise and address the unconscious biases towards stereotypes and appearances in education.

In the face loss of some of her traditional medicinal cultural practices our subject is wondering if they will disappear altogether; or if they will continue to evolve; and if the complementary/alternative approaches will continue to work cooperatively with ‘Western’ medicine. What impact will this have on our subject?

90

CW: depression, mental health and addiction

c h r o n i c WORDS AND ART BY REBECCA FOWLER chronic

idiopathic

adj 1 (of an illness) lasting a long time. 2 habitual, e.g. chronic smoking. 3 informal. of poor quality.

i protect a soft crabmeat heart tender to touch but an angry vermillion shell crusts inflamed and callous hard. i am sensitive raw Angry. a bigbaby stripped of my womanly body stack stack stacking kilos gnarled handclaws before my time. youth trapped in an old body the wrong crab shell ardent ankylosis, systematic synovitis, swollen skinsuit. i am in here virgin blue casing gone but precious insides protected unless they too are stolen and consumed.

92

chronic ghost i’m grey i’m a fog im a cloud living almosttransparently

no-one touches me do I touch them? can anyone see me? i am haunted haunting a touched-up porcelain corpse

a husk of myformerself

empty.

get some colour on my frail eggshell cheeks

get a rose brush it over my wan skin

get some life in my steroidrounded face

pasty full and chubby like a sick baby

look alive. make my deathly pallor smell nicer:

dry shampoo and FaBreeze get my grunge and grot and grease to Go Away! a part of me has passed mourn the death of autonomy

and the birth of fragility:

pallid

filthy

defunct

denied and denying

i am i’m grey i’m a fog i’m a ghost.

93

chronic reliance 75mg desvenlafaxine palepinkpill: seratoninseratonseratonin a slow incline of happymilimetres and pastelstability 5mg valium traded toocasually for green no stopping my monkeymind craved by friends during fledging attempts at sobriety giving me only highdosagefatigue corn starch and diazepam 50mg methotrexate potent hated liverkiller yellow immunediffuser wouldbe deformer of my dormant babies yet stopper of my deformity 5mg solone for pain and weightgain tigerbalm ice for aches and pains powedered disintergration speedysteroid pain cassation 200mg plaquenil pricklytight taut-swimming-cap-headaches inside a soggy brain divorced from its skull floating in sulfate seas 2mg circadin assister to the fractional insomniac a catnap pill escape the rattrap of kapicitta hijack my maniac mind like an tryotranquiliser send me to sleep so i can dream before alarmclocks force bleak consciousness. self-medicate self-medicate self-medicate herbal cannabis should not be smoked, persons under 25 should not use herbal cannabis bong-induced mucus vomitting shaking hands and shaking heads nothing innocuous – nothing seems to help.

94

chronic choices upon waking sick sore sad swollen i resolve to abstain. no more wheezingbreathing through a small straw trapped in my trachea no more mucus weeping lungs of smoke and cockroaches no more rising from the depths of a greygreyfog no more no more.

but as the day c r a w l s o n and my dropdreaddistress at my sweettooth for the high

di s s i p a t e s the roaches emerge crawling whispering... maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? just one! you have a lifetime to be a goodgoodgirl

onlyjustfunctional trumps nearsuicidal right?

yes or no right or wrong

crisp or murky

The Giggles or The Tears prickly legs swarm my mind invading

a weakened state it’s high or cry smoke or choke

on the bile of despondentdrift i n g

and d i s s o c i a t i o n is it so surprising that in the end i always choose to blow trees

instead of crying rivers?

95

alarm-clocks i wake to choppingscissors snipsnipsnip in

enticing sounds of redrustic and rotten deft addicthands

i wake to smoke lingering choking

the dank smell of inside cracked walls tobacco-lined lungs

i wake to myriad medications cold curdled tea

the rancid taste of vomit pills and stomach-acid smoothies

i wake to pervading malaise in my stale bones

the interminable feeling of leaded fatigue my stale skull

i wake to innate discontent a daily battle

boomerang thoughts of dread my stagnant melancholy between happiness and i. melbourne days stretch out before me duller than white bread tasteless as colesbrandbutter my slow rising and mannered walk: listless laps of pottering and doddering around shady alleyways of my apartment chores a countdown notions of soberness a fiction. the inescapable meander into the lounge: a treasure trove of trash and being trashed the lighter and the chop-bowl the old arizona billy the earthy smoke the much craved high the much disdained low the stench of my cannabisregret and my sourstonersweat

96

i dread that bland white bread and butter the staple of my lazy munchydriven diet eateateating filling myself consuming the boredom hours dissipate alongside the smoke sobriety treacles through slowly chop more smoke more moremoremore fade into a stoned coma inevitable repeat sunrise over melbourne.

chronic addiction trips home to perth the Best Medicine the grain and dirt that permeate my mind hover back over melbourne like a storm waiting for me to return before it breaks i’m sitting on the west coast with The Dog i can smell the salt in the clean air even from this park this road the lefroyandhamptonstreet lights the crumbling pizza joint where my high-school ball-date worked tippys pizzeria or was is ruoccos (i think it was) we smoked together the other night he and i i noticed amidst my high his finger tip never grew back from cutting it off years ago learning to make tiramisu i am home but still i smoke i am happy but still in pain once a truck driver almost hit a woman and her pram at these lefroyhamptontippysruoccoslights blaring at us for crossing even though the littlegreenman gave permission i screeched at him to FUCK OFF!!!! but the woman looked frightened The Dog is running for the ball single-mindedly joyous: a dog she looks as if she’s smiling when she pants so i think she is happy but really i have no idea she may hate me and this park on the road. a grotty white film of saliva collects itself on her tongue i am content to breathe the salt air (a break for my lungs though smoke may still come later) contemplating whether it was tippys or ruoccos at which my ball-date worked as it doesn’t really matter the dog is still ‘smiling.’

97

chronic blame a layer of toxic grit permeates my existence, clinging to my clothes, my skin to pubic hair, brain, lungs, heart, bones of course the grit is an unwavering steady grey, seeping into the cracks in the already cracked pavement where melbournians scramble and strut along congested hotham street and 40km/h balaclava road painfully slow and greyer still the layer of gritty grey film has wormed its way over everything south of the yarra it gets thicker and more dense towards st kilda beach the intersection of barkly and carlisle, the marker of true greyness the site of my minds’ unravelling, the beginning of the grey smoke acland street is so swathed in sticky grit that it takes up residence in a black hole in my mind, bathed in forced amnesia the sky, of course, is grey— this every melbournian knows but i know about the microcosms of grit, rain and tears that float around up there, just above the tram lines giving the heavens their gravel complexion.

They ZIP and ZAP! electric as a storm trying to scare me but the grit didn’t scare me out of st kilda nor will the ZIP ZAP chase me from balaclava i can get used to wire crossings and highways above my head i can evolve with the grit i can smoke cones until it’s a blur, until it makes me laugh out loud. if you fly over to the west coast it feels as if the grit is gone but— the grit begins to s e e p out from my brain where it’s been hiding, inside that pressurised metal cabin and inside my ears, nose, pores and even under my weak bitten fingernails poisoning the radiant blues and greens of my west coast the grit and the grime and the trams and the highways the rain and the cold and the fucking Most Liveable City in the World! has infected me with its grit.

chronic

learning finally weightless in prahran public pools water without tears only wrinkled bodies clad in 100% nylon i wish i could be bare aqua soothing my breasts

merry-go-round outside the local 7-11 a decrepit brick monument i drove the 600m it takes to walk an agonising walk will have to pay for fuel after i pay for this pouch a small bird eats a ciggie butt i don’t know what type of bird it is but its peroxideyellow beak stabs the filter againagainagain i do nothing as it flits to another discarded dart

i witness its repulson fail to deter the relentless pecking the bird hops hungrily to a third cigarette stirring loose line in my head ‘i keep riding the ride but I want to get off.’

some sunday swimming an aquatic relaxant a drug-free distraction but how nice would be this be high? yellow-green chlorinehair spreads like spider legs reminding me of my cannabinoid dreaming but i am floating for real this time weightless finally.

Baby

Lotion

BY JEAN BAULCH

Dear Mother sleeps heavy and content. Her baby sleeps too, curled up tight inside her womb. But Father is awake, mind skipping over pools of thoughts, to break the flow he runs a hand over the skin on his arm. Alarmed by the rough, coarse skin, his thoughts grow focused. The thought of baby lotion emerges in his head: baby lotion would make his skin young and elastic again. He folds back the sheet and doona lightly, folds himself out of bed and onto his feet quietly. In the bathroom he opens his shaving kit and finds his razor, then some tooth floss as an afterthought. How clever he feels in this moment of afterthought, ah, he thinks, I’ve thought ahead, what a strategist I am.

Back in the bedroom he peels the cosy layers that cover his wife to reveal the baby bump. He kisses her on the forehead then gently slices along her belly. He lifts baby out; did it just look at me? No, he thinks, it’s barely stirring. He rubs the baby over his sundried skin, soaking in the softness of its baby goo, careful not to get tangled in the cord but doing so anyway. Moisturising complete he curls baby’s limbs back into its mother’s womb. Using the floss, he sews up the layers till the belly bump is round and plump again and falls back into his place on the mattress. Yes, he thinks, running smooth hands along spritely skin.

The morning brings rage, the selfishness! she screams. The sheer arrogance! How dare you use our baby as a lotion! Husband quivers and makes himself small. But see how soft I am my dear. She touches his cheek, the line of his chest; memories of her husband in the days of his youth overtake. Old weathered husband reformed to something silky, almost, perhaps, sexy.

Baby in the womb, used as lotion, hearing Mother fail to defend; discovers a feeling of revenge, how to make plans, form strategies and cunning. Baby lets some days pass, but not so many that the afterthought-floss-stitches have had time to heal. Baby needs these days to practise staying up late at night, late enough that the parents are out cold in soft dreams. With plan formed and sleep conquered the time to strike arrives.

100

Baby Lotion

The stitches are pulled through the holes with care, not out of care for Mother but so Baby can sew itself back into its pocket. With cord trailing behind its graceless moments, Baby moves in jagged staggers towards Mother’s head. Sprawled across her forehead, Baby feels the lotion sinking in deep. After more than an hour Baby is satisfied with the effect. Father is next; alas the cord is not long enough to reach his face, curling up and patiently waiting just above his belly button instead.

Mother wakes as the light from the window announces day. She tries to open her eyes but something is wrong. The drowsiness of morning protects her for a moment, but in the next she is struck with panic. She reaches up a fearful inquisitive hand. It finds skin, far more skin than expected. Soft folds of skin, expanded and thin, her countenance rolling off in reams and reams of baby-bottom-soft skin. She shakes her husband in alarm, what has happened to my face she screams into a muffled wall of drooping face. He wakes and grumps an uncomprehending humph. He lifts his hand and traces the folds of her face, maybe he can pin it back? But he can barely hold it, it slips in his fingers like soap, too soft and silky to be held.

The floss! He yells, so pleased with his thoughts, he can stitch the folds back into place, I do have such wonderful ideas, he whispers to himself. As he leaps from bed to grab the supplies, a strange sensation worms through his body, his movements are stifled, he doesn’t understand. Looking down he sees curtains and curtains of skin unfurling, rippling from below his ribs and mingling with the creases in the sheets. He strokes the skin in horror, so soft, so light and nimble. He tries to bundle it, reaches out and grabs armfuls of it to stuff it into place; but it can’t be wrangled. He tries to suck in his stomach as if this could pull it all tight again.

Baby giggles, blowing bubbles though the baby lotion goo. The wobble it causes is felt

by Mother, the movement catches Father’s eye.

101

The Children are Angry

BY CAITLIN WILSON The children are angry.

They have doffed their infant softness pulled back their ringlets and set their eyes forward The children are angry.

They have bitten off Barbie’s head buried their trucks in the sand and taken up sticks The children are angry.

They have woken from their restless sleeps to dress in black and tape up their knuckles The children are angry.

They have guns that weigh heavier in their hands than they should too solid The children are angry.

The cracking of their bones sound like battle drums Growing pains When did soccer, swims and youthful whims become bitter pills and blood being spilled?

When did fresh air and rosy cheeks become waving flags and saved receipts?

The children are not safe.

The children are not safe from the children Small hands wrapped around small wrists The children are not safe.

And so, the children are Angry.

102

‘I’M ON FIRE’ BY ELSA RAMIREZ

how to: birth (a) name

BY NATALIE FONG CHUN MIN (first things first, some last names come first – history comes first – patriarchy comes first – (but it will not last) my last name does not think I am funny when I make fun of men I’m named after

I don’t know why I struggle with last names

who I share mine with

who I take them from this is how I remember being called

(maybe I want to be special

if my name is not,

can I still be?) by my literature teacher at eighteen an unwarranted inflexion, like he was playing tennis with my name the way one would typically play squash, but no matter how he tried, (with justified uncertainty), he could not find the confidence to butcher some name and not know what it is he’d done (my first name consists two separate words wrong, or who it was he had done in English, they are phonetically transcribed wrong by. being British from two Mandarin words that mean and a teacher of literature, one cannot pure, distilled / and agile, wise) fault him for not mastering names that don’t appear in The Age of Innocence, or Lady Windermere’s (it had been our last tutorial, I realised I had guest list. been anonymous to him all along.

(did I like being transparent? did it free me?)

by my biology teacher at fifteen she sings my name, in her exaggeration, she adds vowels and dips the intonations such that they sounded like the starting words of an old Chinese poem and makes me feel connected to a body of literature I felt I had to be possessive of.

104

(“spring / slumber” – the slumber continuing from or reminiscent of winter hibernation)

I will always be “spring slumber” to her, although I will never know if she thinks about the nuances, the melancholy behind the poetic “slumber” that someone’s taken to detach themselves from waking from being from partaking in the heartbreaking mundanity of real life; the poem offers me something more than myself, a nickname, a nicked name, something to call myself by, to be remembered by, to be learned, appreciated, I almost thank her for offering me the chance to be some thing more than myself. by my mother when I am lost (in the crowd, maybe forever)

she calls it with such urgency

it feels almost thrilling to be me

not hiding behind any thing I cannot pretend to be seeking

someone I cannot find to pass off as me sometimes she sounds so scared

she cannot find me by my name

I have to remind myself I don’t

actually want to trade my name,

’specially not

the second part of my first (“agile, wise”) name which my mother chose,

which is the only third of my

name she could choose, (according to tradition)

the only part of my name that’s

different from my sister’s and everyone in my generation

of the extended family,

but it wouldn’t matter to my future children because

GIRLS DON’T (GET TO) BIRTH (LAST) NAMES.

(we should be known by

other than our (last) names)

ART BY WINNIE JIAO

105

This Time with Meaning

BY HUGH RAYNER

The woman smiles at him as soon as he wakes, moves. He didn’t know she was in the bed. But now she looks into his eyes and searches for something.

He smiles back at her, a big smile, a smile with nothing behind it, and it appeases her.

“Morning,” she says. The way she speaks is routine, a well-worn rut.

He replies, “Hello.”

He doesn’t know her, but he keeps smiling for her until she opens the curtains, letting in a bright day, and leaves the room. She’s old. There are creases across her face and her hair is grey. She has become old in the moment of her inception.

As the door to the bedroom clicks shut he tries to find meaning in the white walls, the splatters of art, and the relics of old adventures. There’s a chipped wooden monkey in the corner, crouching with its hands over its eyes, made by a foreign craftsman and put in this room to not see this morning play out. There are pictures but they’re too small and far for him to see them yet.

When he feels ready he climbs stiffly out of bed. He catches sight of a small red book next to his bed, emblazoned READ ME. He leaves it there and goes to look at the photos. The woman is in them and she’s young and beautiful, so beautiful. He loves that woman, the one with the smile that holds all the fun of the world, the one with her arms around him. Her name escapes him so he leaves that photo, moving to the next. There’s a boy on his lap and he knows the boy, knows him well. Maybe even loves him, too. The boy doesn’t have a name either, just a familiar face.

At the window he stands. It’s a precipice. The room is shadows and beyond the world is bright and colourful. The woman is in the yard, the one from the photograph, watering purple roses with a rusted watering can. She moves to the next plant and in that movement is age, and now she isn’t the woman he loves. She’s someone he doesn’t know, someone who bends with the weight of carrying the watering can, and now he can’t watch and he goes to the red book on his bedside table.

Taking it he turns on a lamp without looking, his hand reaching and finding the switch without thought.

The first page is yellow around the edges, the ink faded. The words are blurred and won’t come into focus, no matter how close he holds the book, no matter how far he pushes it away. A large word across the top of the page survives. It reads: GLASSES He finds them on the bedside table and pushes them on and the words become clear.

There are good days, it reads, and bad days. On some everything will be clear and on others you won’t be able to think for all the fog in your head.

106

This Time with Meaning Do you remember Anna?

He looks up and sees the woman smiling at him from the photograph, smiles back at her, and realises she’s the old woman in the yard, too.

If you do it’s a good day.

Your memory is going. But it’s important that you know that you love her. Tell her this. Tell Anna you love her, please.

It’s then that she comes into the room, smelling of the roses she’d just cared for, in a warm flush of air that doesn’t reach him. She sees him reading the book and waits for something from him.

Then she asks, cautiously, “How are you?”

“I’m good, Anna,” he says.

Her throat jumps as something catches in it, her breath maybe, and she leaves the room quickly.

Perhaps he should have said he loved her, but in that moment he couldn’t. The words were not his to speak.

You don’t have to go to work. If it’s a weekday Anna will go soon. Here is a list of things you should do while she’s away.

Below those things is another list, this of books like the red book.

• Important memories (ADD TO THIS IF YOU REMEMBER SOMETHING) • Anna • William • Friends and family • Work It says they’re supposed to be in the drawer but he can only find four of them. The one titled ‘Anna’ is absent, but he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t feel like reading anymore. He leaves the books on the bed because he has to leave the room. The darkness there is not good for him. It feels like being frozen.

There’s a kitchen and on a plate are two pieces of cold toast and next to them is a glass of water. It had perspired and now a puddle of water remained on the bench when he drank it.

“The toast is yours, honey,” Anna says. “I got some more apricot jam. It’s your favourite.”

He eats the toast while she watches as though again expecting something from him. He doesn’t like the jam.

“What do you think?” she asks, hovering behind him.

“It’s good,” he says.

She makes him take some pills then goes away and he doesn’t know if she’s happy or sad and he doesn’t care. He leaves the rest of the toast and goes and stands at the back door, looking out into the yard. It’s green and alive and he walks out into it and lets his toes sink into the earth like ancient roots. The sun warms his body. On his forearm is a large, black tattoo of a key about to open a mountain. Touching it he knows it’s old.

It seems older than him. It lives on his arm unlike how he lives in that yard.

“I’m going,” the woman says from inside. “Your book is here.”

107

ART BY SIMON CLARK

This Time with Meaning Automatically he says, “Goodbye.” He doesn’t turn but he feels her go.

After another moment in the sun and soft grass he returns to the house, to the red book laying on the kitchen table next to an empty vase. As he begins to read something soft touches his leg. Looking down he finds the deep brown eyes of a shaggy white dog. He pats it and it wants nothing more from him. Its tail wags, a clear sign of approval, and he bends down to give it his full attention. It is his friend, because he is its friend, and it loves him and asks nothing.

He doesn’t know how long he spends patting the dog but by the time he stands up, once the dog tires, his knees are stiff and he’s forgotten the red book. He picks it up again and reads.

There are good days…

“Anna,” he mouths as he reads.

There’s a list of things he must do, and instructions to copy them to the next blank sheet in the book, so he can tick them off as he goes. The book is a diary, and the next blank page has a date. The book is full of pages he can’t remember writing and boxes he can’t remember ticking. It’s thick with forgotten ink.

The first task is to clean the dishes by the sink. His first challenge is to find the washing up liquid. The dog returns and he pats it again and rediscovers the red book.

The last page written upon has no ticked boxes. The first thing he must do is clean the dishes. The hot water turns his hands red.

After he finishes the dishes he is to take the dog, Rocco, for a walk. Attached to Rocco’s lead, by the front door, is a laminated map with a path picked on it. Before they can begin a neighbour calls from her yard.

“How you feeling?”

“Good,” he replies.

The neighbour stands there in her own world, a statue. She is entrenched there. As much a fixture as the shadow falling across her from one of his trees. Except she turns to watch him go, worry writ across her face.

He comes alive as he walks. The sun is in his bones. Rocco stays patiently by his side, except for when he must dart away for a new scent or to snap at one of the springtime insects shooting from the grass like fireworks.

The map is unnecessary. He finds his way easily, turning down familiar streets, passing familiar houses. He even says hello to the man who works in the corner store, using his name, while he fishes in his pocket for some change to buy milk. Anna would appreciate that.

He can picture himself walking back into his home and seeing her there, waiting for him. Perhaps they could do the Sunday crossword together like they used to. He buys a newspaper from the corner store too.

By the time he returns home his strides are long and Rocco is happy, his tail wagging, his head always upturned to see his master’s face.

“Anna,” he calls as he opens the front door. “I’m back, and I got some milk.”

No-one replies. He moves through the house and feels like a ghost. There’s a red diary on the counter and it tells him it’s a Wednesday. He panics for a moment, then remembers he doesn’t work anymore because he’s sick. Anna works now.

110

This Time with Meaning As he thinks of her a smile finds his lips. It’s small but unbeatable. Rocco goes into the backyard as he always does after a walk, while he sees a picture on the wall. It’s of Anna and William. In it William is a man. He looks every bit a scientist, with eager eyes and a hanging frame. He has Anna’s mind, thankfully.

There is a deep desire in him and he takes up the phone, dialling the first half of a number before he has to look the rest up. He stands in the living room, unwilling to sit, waiting for the call to connect.

“Hello?” he hears.

“Anna,” he says. “I love you, so much.”

“Oh.” There’s a lot of quiet after that so he decides to keep speaking. He watches Rocco roll in the grass outside as he does.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

Now he waits. Those were the things he had to say. All he wants is to hear Anna’s voice, hear her say she loves him. But all he can hear is a soft, repeating sound, which he realises is someone crying.

“Is that you, baby?” he asks.

In the yard Rocco yelps, snaps his jaws, gets low on the ground. There’s something in front of him.

“Something’s got Rocco riled up,” he tells Anna. “I’ll be right back.”

“No, please—” she says, but it’s too late.

He drags Rocco by the collar from a frightened lizard, and puts the dog inside with the promise they’ll both go out once the lizard has moved on. The phone is hanging off the hook and he puts it back.

The motion tells him he’s just hung up on someone but he doesn’t know who, or why someone would be on the line if the phone was just hanging there. Then his eyes bug and he scrambles in his shirt pocket for a pen but doesn’t find it. Scrambles in the kitchen drawers, runs upstairs as best he can and finds a pen on a desk.

‘ANNA’, he writes on his hand in thick shaky letters.

He loves her with all his soul, but as he looks at his hand the word has less and less meaning. He means to scrub it off but is distracted by a sound downstairs and goes to see a scruffy dog barking at the back door.

“All right,” he says, and opens it for the dog.

On his way to get a glass of water he finds a red book that says ‘READ ME’ on it.

There are good days…

There are instructions telling him what to do with his day there, too, but he reads past it, too tired to do any work. There’s a list of other books which he has written.

The red book says they’re upstairs so he wanders up to find them spread on an unmade bed, in craters on the duvet. He opens the one titled ‘William’ and reads a page about someone he doesn’t know doing things which have no meaning to him and leaves it in the drawer. ‘Friends and family’ begins with a dog called Rocco, who’s a Border Collie and nine years old, and continues with other names he doesn’t recognise.

‘Work’ is dull, a description of the life of a carpenter.

111

This Time with Meaning The one called ‘Important memories’ catches his attention. He reads about a day he spent in a circus with a pretty young woman called Anna, and how he started feeling sick at the top of the ferris wheel because he’d eaten too much circus food, and how she patted his back and talked to him until they were safely on the ground. He’d vomited in a bin and been afraid she’d be disgusted and go home, but she kept patting his back and even got him a glass of water from a stall. She looked a bit green, too, and before they moved on she vomited in the bin and he refilled the glass of water for her and patted her back until she felt better. He’d tried to win her a toy from a game but it was rigged, until she had a go and won herself a cheap little wooden monkey.

There are other stories in there but that one repeats several times. He goes through and finds them all and picks out the differences between them. Some don’t mention the monkey. Others wrote of a breathless first kiss after a roller coaster.

He put the book down and tried to find the book titled ‘Anna’, sure there would be more stories in there. The circus means something to him, though he doesn’t know what. It produces a full feeling in his chest and an infinite, faraway sadness that he enjoys. The book isn’t in the drawer or hiding amongst the others. He sees the word ‘ANNA’ on his hand and realises he’s been looking for the book for a while and must search the difficult, forgetful places of the house.

A time later he sits on the couch, desperately thinking of places he hasn’t searched.

He forces himself to his tired feet and looks everywhere again but the book is nowhere.

It frustrates him until he finds himself holding and hating the book titled ‘Important memories’. He hides it beneath his bedside table so it won’t make him think of Anna again. It’s too difficult. The ghost haunts him and he wants it exorcised from his mind.

He sits back on the couch and a soft, warm dog curls up next to him. The dog has a scratch on its jaw that he only finds when he absently brushes the dog’s muzzle and it whimpers.

“It’s all right,” he says, and comes back with some water in a cup to clean the scratches.

They’re only shallow and he knows the dog will forget about them if no-one touches them. Suddenly, the dog’s head snaps up and he stares through the walls of the house.

In a moment it’s bolting away. The sounds of its feet scrabbling through the house echo. Then there are footsteps moving faster even than the dog’s.

A woman rushes into the living room and sees him sitting on the couch. She envelopes him with a hug he hardly returns. She pulls away and looks at him with wet, smiling eyes.

“Hello,” he says.

She looks at his eyes until it’s too much and she has to dive into his chest and hold him tight against her. She says a muffled hello and sobs, and he isn’t sure how he’s upset her but she only cries more when he pats her back. The confusion spreads into his chest and turns into disquieting sadness.

Now he pulls away and takes her hands and asks her what the problem is. She sees the writing on his hand, the name, and asks who Anna is.

“I don’t know,” he says, and sees she doesn’t believe him. He tries to make her feel better. “She’s not important.”

112

This Time with Meaning A deep sound rises from the woman’s heart. It’s the sound of something barely held together breaking. She pushes back into the house and leaves him in the living room, alone because the dog followed her.

They don’t talk, but she prepares him dinner and they watch television. The show is unimportant. He sits there half-asleep with a blanket over his legs, which feel a chill even though the back door is closed. He’s more focussed on patting the dog than anything else, but when she stands he does too because he knows it means it’s time to clean the dishes. He puts the blanket over the dog and follows her to the kitchen.

“Did you leave this here?” she asks, pointing to a bottle of warm milk on the counter.

It’s the first thing she’s ever said to him.

“I don’t know.”

She throws the bottle in the bin and demands the change from his pockets.

He stands there while she piles the pans and plates by the sink. She hands him a bulging black bag and asks him to take it to the bin outside. He can barely carry it but he makes it.

In one motion he tries to throw it in but the edge catches the bin, which tips over and spills the top layer of trash into the street. There’s a book in there, a red book, and it doesn’t belong so he puts it aside and cleans up the mess.

On the front cover the book says ‘ANNA’. At the top of the first page it says: Put me back in your bedside table’s drawer when you’re finished with me.

He takes it to bed and reads a couple of pages before finding his eyes drifting past words. He puts it away and turns over to see a woman lying next to him. The look she gives him makes him uncomfortable so he closes his eyes. The lights go out.

After a while the woman gets slowly out of bed and walks around to his side. He isn’t asleep but he can feel her eyes on him so he doesn’t move. She takes something from his bedside table and goes into another room.

A while later someone slipping into the bed wakes him. A woman. There is enough moonlight outside to catch the tears falling across her face as she looks at him.

On their sides they look at each other. Her in silent tears. He in silence.

He doesn’t know what to say or what’s wrong.

“Goodnight,” he says, and rolls over.

She says, “I love you, Danny.”

Empty words come from his mouth, a horrific little lie.

“I love you too.”

He dreams of a woman he loves, and his fingers burn when he thinks of touching her skin. She is young and she is life. She lives beneath a ferris wheel and has a smile that holds the world. The air around her sparks. He loves her deeply and she is gone, gone to him, gone somewhere he can’t go. He would do anything to tell her he loves her one more time, would die to tell her he loves her. He sleeps and his fingers burn.

113

Folklore

BY AMANDA TAN I remember cold oatmeal.

My mother compartmentalises Her love, the way Oranges Split into perfect segments.

Her lip drips with mandarin juice and rust-speckled blood And anything else is too sweet for me.

Cuts through the greasy kitchen floors, Fish eye and fruit rind, God Only understands the words we do not say.

Isn’t that right, ah-ma?

She wraps herself in a batik cloth And disappears into a patchy haze, Fragrant smoke.

Warm, wet, breath.

I remember cold oatmeal – my mother like a magnificent apparition, ah-ma, like the women before her.

Rotting fruit and supple flesh.

And me, The ill-timed joke Seconds after a tragedy.

114

ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

Blood and Bone

BY ALICE ZUZEK Don’t stay too long in this country or it will capture you Dad, arms brown and torso pale slumped camp chair above half-empty dam dead sad orchard tree skeletons underlie land of legacy: brown and brittle midday heat cerulean sky dense bone-dry on the horizon.

Don’t stay. Paddocks empty and arid. Clouds hinge to hills, distant memories of childhood: fertilising with Blood n Bone, raking it into the soil. Fertilise a moonscape.

Waterless dirt becomes fortified clay ankle-breaking. Capture you.

Dad’s new wife sits in the kitchen massaging dough her freckled hand reaching, reaching.

Wrap-around porch and yellowed lace curtains Moonlight hides the brown grass.

‘AFTER JEFF WALL—DOMESTIC MILK’ BY JEAN BAULCH

Making Dumplings

BY GARY YANG When I was a child, it seemed that at every possible excuse my house would become inundated with people. For a whole day, the backyard and kitchen would be transformed into a bustling bazaar, with music and food and gambling filling up every space.

They were relatives who flocked to my house, although that term is used loosely.

When my parents emigrated from China, they did it alone. They had moved in with my mother’s uncle, who had fled from Mao’s regime to Australia decades ago. He was the only other family they had in the entirety of a continent. But now every Chinese person with the slightest connection to them, to us, would congregate outside on our big backyard.

They arrived, usually late, in droves. The men would sit at the table, beers cracked open, laughing loudly, as the women brought in giant bowls of marinated meat or salad or fruit. They played mah-jong or cards as their wives cooked. Sounds filled the house: laughter and footsteps, glass clinking on glass and the clacking of mah-jong tiles. The air would be hazy with cigarette smoke, and the smell of food frying reached my room.

We had a big outdoor stove. My dad was very proud of it. When we first moved into our house, which was a mansion compared to our previous home, my mother was dismayed at the electric hot plate that sat in the kitchen.

“This is no stove,” she lamented loudly, “how can I cook with this? It can’t even hold a wok.” And my dad, ever industrious, went to work, buying the largest gas stove he could find, then constructing a massive wooden table around it. It was placed on our veranda, where it clashed magnificently against the fine white stone ground. Ugly as it was, the stove had an attractive aura of squat dignity, and held up well to the pressures of Chinese cooking.

When people would come over, the whole area was unnavigable. Five layers deep in chittering Asian women, passing each other diced vegetables, skewers and little jam jars of spice, an impenetrable mass of joviality. Every so often one of their hands would flick out, too quick for the eye to follow, and somehow snatch a small child darting by.

If the child was theirs they would scold them, otherwise they would pinch their cheeks and stuff sweets into their pockets.

We, the children, had the time of our lives as the adults bustled about. Sometimes we would watch Power Rangers on VHS, upstairs where the noise wasn’t so bad and we could actually almost hear the TV. Other times we would play basketball with our tiny hoop in front of the garage. Or we would take turns riding my scooter down the driveway. Or we would run off with my dog to the park, or try to sneak grapes off the giant fruit platter, or strategically place ourselves where our relatives could see us but our parents couldn’t, and they would pass out money-filled red envelopes and wink and tell us not to tell our mothers.

118

‘SCOOP UP THE MOON’ BY SOPHIE SUN

Making Dumplings I remember one scene in particular. I was in the kitchen, snagged by my mother and forced to help make dumplings. There were several steps to this: first we would take the dough and roll it out into fat snakes. I would watch as my mother would cut them into little thick lumps. And then we would roll the lumps, knead them into spheres, and my mum would take her rolling pin and with several lightning, incomprehensible manoeuvres, turn it into a single perfectly circular dumpling skin. And thus, a spoonful of a mixture made of ground pork, soy sauce, brown vinegar, chives and various other odds and ends was wrapped within the skin, using the webbing between the forefinger and thumb to enclose the dumpling in such a way that it was shaped into plump crescents.

At that time, I had not yet mastered this particular art of dumpling wrapping.

Instead of delicate crescents, I would resort to crudely pinching the edges of the skin together and creating ugly half-moons.

“Ah, well,” said my aunt, “they’ll all taste the same in the end.” And she pinched my cheek with hands that smelt of spices. Of soy sauce and vinegar.

She was visiting from China, staying in the room where our ping-pong table was usually kept. The table had been swapped with an old, single bed some days prior. My aunt was the fourth born child of my mum’s family. So she was known to me as Fourth Aunty.

Fourth Aunty was short and round and smiled a lot. Despite being younger than my mother, her child had already grown up and left home, and so as she would spend her time doing chores and doting over me.

“Oh, how big you’ve gotten!” she would say every time she saw me. “The last time I saw you, you were just a baby!” And then she would turn to my mother and launch into a rapid exchange in their native Wuhan dialect, smiling and looking at me the whole while. Even if I couldn’t understand them, I still felt myself blush.

And so the afternoon passed, making dumplings and avoiding adults, eating from the conveyer belt of food that streamed from the kitchen, trying my father’s wine and blanching, and soon it was all over, all of it, with plates to wash and leftovers to be refrigerated and beer caps to be picked from the grass.

It has been a while since I’ve been to one of those noisy, chaotic gatherings. It’s been a while since I’ve had dumplings as well. When I do get them, I never make them myself.

I have no time to. Instead they come pre-made, and all I need to do is throw them in the steamer for a bit. They’re usually too salty, and the filling is bright pink.

When I come back home, I know now where I will be seated at these gatherings.

Not on the beat-up sofa upstairs, with the board games and TV volume turned up to max, but the table where my father will be. And while I may not be forced into making dumplings, I can be sure that I will still smell soy sauce and vinegar.

‘SCOOP UP THE MOON’ BY SOPHIE SUN

121

Matchbox

BY GREER SUTHERLAND I opened a matchbox imagine my surprise when I found Dante’s ninth circle of hell inside We were all reincarnated in this hell as maggots, stored inside a giant tank, which was in turn put in a filing drawer by a gloved hand. Forever wriggling against each other and hating. Each maggot never knew if it was writhing against a family member or the sticky rice-grain body of their worst enemy. I watched, as though this was all a film, but I thought perhaps somehow my subconscious was in amongst them, rolling over slowly and going nowhere, because I felt a sickness—not localised in any part of my body, not localised in any location in fact, the sickness was just part of all consciousness. Or subconsciousness. I focused, against my will, on one particular maggot, the tiny dimples in the white sheen of its body. Was this maggot significant— was it somehow me, or someone I loved, or someone I should love? Or just a maggot?

It came closer and closer, or I did, until it was everywhere, until all was yellow-white, then I was in a car. Vinyl cracked and suctioned to skin which was perhaps my skin, perhaps someone else’s. Me and he and she were no longer relevant concepts. We and they might be, or something else altogether that has never been heard of before.

Sun filled the car, like wet concrete still gluggy but drying. Black road raced out behind, and black fields exploded to the horizon. Trees that weren’t busy being dead were busy dying. The car gurgled but mostly there was just the whoosh of getting closer. We had to wear long, heavy clothes, and we picked at the sleeves which collected sweat and bristled at our wrists. Knives can be gentler than lace. Somehow we knew that, at the end of this drive, there was a house where the doorjambs wanted to crumble away because they’d become so worn away by shouting. The skin kept being whipped away into vinyl and the car kept going and going.

122

Matchbox

That was all wrong, just a dream. Instead we clutch the cavernous inward curve of our stomach as we tumult in water like fire, ice stretching as a ceiling above us forever.

Until we can drink the water all away we must live and die here. Our lungs stretch and tumult for air; the sound of limbs against this thick ice seems like it should be sharp but it isn’t, only a dull bump. Our forehead is scabbing up from the ice scrubbing away our skin and then layer and layer of blood. Above, footsteps pace along where we lurch, striding until they reach our head. Then they turn and reach our feet, then they come back around. We can’t tell exactly but from the silhouette and a distant splintering sound we think they must be shattering bowl after bowl, marching above and always breaking another bowl— I closed the matchbox for now, and it was all gone.

I always thought heaven would be skimming leaves out of an aqua-blue hotel swimming pool. Standing with my net in the neardark, wearing a cotton dressing gown, all alone, while crickets chirrup.

123

‘SWIM IN MY HEART’ BY ARINA MIZUNO

‘RAIN (REIGN) OF LIGHT’ BY LIEF CHAN

mums & cocks

BY CLARRIE LOCK a tooth brush into the pink anal retention knock – slippery shame fresh mint and fumbling pure white : dark flecks beads of shame homo-ception am I proud? assless chaps adorn my mucus dribbles down my chin death drops on my skinny chest i squeal out pitch forks ready the runt waits for bacon harder, cum on am I proud ? button up a plain white shirt butt plug out squeeze my body into straight lines tilt my crown out of view earrings come out bloody forced into a closed hole scarred by faggottry am I proud ?

pop!

rainbows are so lonely they’re never whole glory hole on my knees i search through pink birth splatters in my face swinging back and forth chains hold me up a play ground can I feed on your placenta all this pink and not one womb it hurts me– milk sick am I proud ? sometimes.

127

ART BY REBECCA FOWLER

The creative writing anthology of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), Above Water is published by the general secretary of UMSU, Daniel Beratis. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the printers or the editors. Above Water is printed by Printgraphics, care of the cherubic Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators.

This collection is Š Above Water and Above Water reserves the right to republish material in any format.

The media and creative arts offices of UMSU are located in the city of Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders—past, present and emerging—and acknowledge that we are on stolen land and sovereignty was never ceded.