Her gnarled fingers were like an oyster shell protecting its gem. Slowly, she opened her hand to reveal a dainty, old-fashioned lady’s watch. Its delicate face was surrounded by a tiara of miniscule diamonds. The slim band rolled into two...
There was another life before this one, she knows this for certain. A hazy memory of the place where she grew up: dusty and dry, parched by its own breath, relieved only by waves of golden sunlight. The tree across...
We barrel across the Narrows in the stagnant heat of a summer’s midnight, low and intimate with the bitumen. Windows down, radio blaring. Tepid streetlights strobe in the spaceship curves of your bonnet. The freeway is ours, you promise, and...
I find him awake in his hospital bed. I hand him the diary. He frowns. ‘I already have one. My wife gave it to me for my birthday.’ ‘Your old one is full.’ Irritation spreads across his face. He shoves...
If she closes her eyes she can shut out the distance so when the wheels hit the driveway she can pretend home is just around the corner. Then she can try to love him again despite being here, in Augusta,...
I slam the front door behind me so hard the windows tremble. Before that, I hurled the glass vase across the kitchen. The one your mother gave us, hand-painted with cerulean flowers. It shattered on impact with the fridge and...
My son strokes the balero’s worn hand-carved edges. I show him how to toss the barrel, peg upright, string loose, catch it neatly in the hole, its green and burgundy and black Aztec design painted for pesos in a Mexican...
The air at Floreat felt heavy, as the waves licked the shore, scattering shells carelessly across the beach. We had collected more than enough, when Ella handed me another. ‘Mermaid shell,’ she said. ‘Aha,’ I replied absently, turning it over,...
I left your ID card in my breast pocket and the washing machine buckled your photo into a misshapen parody. The colours are right, but it isn’t you anymore. Hold still, let me remember. Your face shimmies loose in my...
I wish you could feel it, know it. The feeling of swinging weightless over the river on a rope tied to a branch, and the terrifying freedom of letting go. Of plunging through watery shafts of light to the murky...
