“Midnight Wash” 2023 Flashscapes! Competition Shortlist

The moon grabs me tonight. Scrubs me all over. She washes away all this hatred and uncertainty, the remains of it bleeding upwards into space. I watch her face and remember the sigh of seasons, of sunshine running through wheat crops. The days when I knew how to be; skipping around and scraping knees. Before I became a library of rules and reckoning. I float now, in this lightless water, letting the lorikeets scream away my anguish.