His name was Stephen. Nobody called him that of course. He went by his surname, Tan. We attended St. Paul’s together. A Catholic boy’s school in the suburbs, it was a dangerous place to be gay. Had I been willing to make a fuss, I would not have allowed myself to be enrolled there. Tan was thin, with a long neck; dirty black hair flicked over the collar of his blazer, in blatant defiance of the school’s dress code. When he smiled, which he did often, crooked teeth jutted in strange directions; with his mouth closed his lips were full […]

My grandmother had a hunchback. My mother made me do yoga as a kid. She would watch as I stretched into the cobra position on the kitchen tiles and wouldn’t let me watch TV until she was satisfied with the curve of my back and the length of my neck. Now, even when I don’t want to, I stand straight and stare ahead. When I walk the dogs, when I pass people I went to school with. When I’m tired. I feel my mother’s palms pressed flat across my shoulder blades and I rise like a snake.   Today, the […]

I was a wasp before. I can remember hatching inside a fig. I was a bulbous, gelatinous thing. There were others, and we grew together and hardened and became long and spindly. After a while the others began to leave the fig, and I followed. We smelled the outside and moved towards it, tunnelling through pink tendrils and rough green skin. Everything was green outside. All around were green leaves and fruits and the sun shone through the leaves and warmed our bodies, which were a deep metallic pine colour. We stretched our limbs and our wings. We crawled together […]

‘I mean, before Sam there was Lynden, of course. But that relationship ended on a pre-determined date when he had to start his year 12 exams. He lost his virginity to me, but he told everyone he hadn’t because he didn’t come.’ The velvety scratch of nails on skin, of gentle, grumpy murmurs of agreement. Legs akimbo. Josie and Jen lying perpendicular on the balcony, me playing with Josie’s hair while Jen stares straight up with her hands behind her head. Subdued after hours of screeching about ex-boyfriends and dirty dishes, clutching sweaty bottles of beer, waving hands. ‘The only […]

She had waited three days for him to come home, and during those days she had never worried. If you haven’t done anything wrong, she reasoned, why should you have anything to fear? On the fourth day she got the Telegram. On the fifth day she went to Martin Place to leave a bouquet at his last-known place of breathing, but the Brave Digger there moved her on. Poppies only, he told her, and she looked down at the cluster of pink-grey proteas—he’d always loved proteas, like plump galahs he said—clutching them silently amid the sea of red. She wept, […]

There was only one thing on Janet’s shopping list, but she still tore the strip of paper from the sticky-pad on the fridge and tucked it into her purse. It was a frog-shaped pad which Marcus had begged her to buy when she was picking up extra Christmas decorations at the pound store last November. She was brushing the dusty strings of tinsel, watching lines of foil float to the ground at the lightest touch, when he had spotted the frog pad. He  had loved how its round cheeks suggested it had just finished a delicious meal. She was not […]

On the last Friday of term, just after the bell rang, Eva came up behind me at the bag racks. ‘Hey,’ she said. I was tying my jumper around my waist. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Do you want to sleep over at my house tomorrow night?’ It had been ages since Eva and I had spent time together, just the two of us. ‘I’ll have to ask.’ ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Get your mum to call my mum tonight.’ She reached into her pocket and handed me a piece of paper that she’d ripped out of her science book. ‘This is her […]

Aldo remembers, through the late-night haze of his seventieth birthday party in a back room of the Brisbane Workers’ Club, with the glow of port on his lips and Mary on his lap, the week in 1999 when he twice injured his hand. His eyes blur with time and distance. His well-wishers allow him, as they have learned to do in recent years, a moment to himself. He drifts amid the tunes from Rich’s guitar and the plumes of Mary’s cigar and his fingers move over the dimples and ridges of disturbed tissue on his right palm, the papery skin, […]

Up here I am a bird. The wind blows through my feathers when I spread my wings and I am alive. The treetops tip and bow, beckoning me to launch into the wildness, to freedom. But I am only a fledgling; the thought of flight makes me quiver. I nestle into my sheltered perch, the scent of eucalypt swooning me into stillness. Up here in my tree I can do anything. She can’t stop me. She can’t even see me.   Until the autumn of my fourth year of school I had an average life. My dad mostly off driving […]

Outside the bent metal blinds, a mouse-like Corolla sat parked in the driveway. The streetlights shone off its maroon paint, and the sky behind it was lavender. On its roof a sign read in bold blue letters, ‘FLIENDSHIP DRIVING INSTRUCTOR’—except for the L, black in a yellow square, and the P, red in white. What the hell was Fliendship? A play on the fact that there isn’t an el sound in Japanese, so all Asians can only say ar? Winston had told me he was going to pick me up, so I reckoned this was his ride. I left my […]

  ONE You’re on your back in a Tintin t-shirt, a half-removed tomato sauce stain ground into the grey cotton. You’re reading poetry aloud to yourself, because this usually works when you’re tired and your brain is going too fast. Harry and his lover are in the other bedroom, together. You can’t ever say that word out loud: lover. You hate lover like you hate partner and panties and daddy and cock. Lover is being at a wine tasting and not liking wine. Lover is sour like fire, unripe pears, passionfruit notes and wine clear as water. It feels rank […]