Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves? Was I a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? May I not witness your grief? Am I not your friend? Art thou not tired, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Joy?
No Cockatoos
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Man comes home late, showers
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Passage
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The Weathermen
It’s morning and I’m in bed with the covers pulled high, waiting for the weathermen. There’s no set time but they always come. I lie and listen for the sound of paper scratching up dust.
The Ninch
She is standing sentinel when I round the corner. A still figure in the early morning, dark parka pulled close. A girl-shape on the edge of the reef, cast in relief by the…
Kernel Panic
She is woken before her alarm by an overzealous thump of her heart. Sweat pools—in the divot above her sternum, in her bellybutton, in the depression between her breasts. It’s still dark.
The Pumpkin Shoots
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The Secret Garden
This bloody orphan, standing at the foot of my bed. Small, pallid, yellow-haired and sour-faced. ‘I’ve stolen a garden,’ she says.
Every night this kid wakes me up. She says the same thing each time, in exactly the same way. The third night, I’m already irritated. ‘You said that yesterday,’ I tell her. ‘And the day before. Who are you anyway?’
Tempting the Pest
‘Push!’ I yell even though it’s just me heaving the long claw of crowbar down into the sand and wedging up the fence from below. The mesh winces, creaks. ‘Push!’ I shout like a midwife birthing new life; here in the long hot flat with the afternoon swelling and the wires ruling long lines of fire. I press what is left of my weight into the bar, heaving as the fence clings on, its thin nails gripping at the soil.
The Immortality Project
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We were only ever visiting to begin with
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