A half-finished crochet blanket lays on the floor, its frayed ends fully submerged in last night’s pasta alfredo. My dead pointe shoes (three months overdue for replacement) are haphazardly strewn against the cheap faux-leather ottoman I bought on Amazon with a gift card from last Christmas. My friend, Alec, surveys the mess and laughs. ‘You…
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‘It’s a surprise,’ I say to my mother, ‘just wait outside with your phone.’ She agrees and takes her phone outside with the camera ready to shoot as I walk into my studio to get ready. When I emerge a few minutes later she struggles to control her laughter while I navigate the garden path…
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Have you ever felt that thundering ache in your chest, like your heart was going to explode? Rupture? Like it was you under the floorboards in an Edgar Allen Poe poem? The imminent booming becoming louder and louder and louder until it eventually drives you insane? And everyone just looks the other way? We all…
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The room spun around me, blurring the faces that stared out at me from all directions. I reached for the wall to steady myself and realised too late I’d missed the mark. My body fell to the floor. Ashley laughed at me and continued her drunken dance to Arrested Development’s Mr Wendal. From my…
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They say women should never make a relationship their entire life. They say we should have our own friends, hobbies and careers and shouldn’t look to a man for financial gain or to complete our lives like the final piece in a complicated jigsaw puzzle. They say that when two people come together it should…
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About fifteen years ago, Ness and I were best friends, and she recently shared some news on social media that had me weeping, even ugly crying, on and off for days. Throughout the course of our close friendship, Ness and I shared a penchant for drinking lots (oh, those Midori shakers!). We danced, twerked and…
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To the woman at the end of our Main Rd near home. Waiting for the bus with a child in a pram, and a stubbie of full strength cracked well before midday – I’m sorry I judged you. I don’t know what your day (or life) has held. It’s obviously your choice what you…
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I have spent the better part of my twenties working 80-hour weeks on an endless cycle of corporate deals. It is at 3am during one of these weeks of sleep deprivation that I realise I need a new hobby. Something to relax. Something that doesn’t involve waking up at 5am, riding a bike and sweating…
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None of it matters. The plastic, the gadgets, the high glossed magazines; the heels with the right brand name, faded out on the soles, from all the running you do to keep in front. Things obtained to make life easier, dull a pain, stroke an ego; to make you feel like you mean something while you hurl…
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‘He asked me out again, so I just told him I had boyfriend.’ As I said the words it just sounded like another futile story of mine. I was re-telling the story of an older guy, who was probably in his mid-40s, asking me out. I was always a loud presence in a room, but…
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Pill must be getting killed because I feel way out of my depth. There’s something rejuvenating about finding yourself in unchartered territory, though. It means you’re alive and you don’t know everything. It’s a relief. I had a dream about two little boys that my boyfriend and I had to care for. They weren’t…
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I want to dedicate this to the people who lost their lives in the Orlando massacre. This morning I woke up with my wife’s alarm at six. I remembered that we’d polished off the last of the salad over the weekend, so I threw on my robe and made Emma something fresh for lunch while…
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I love denial. I always have. If I don’t think that anything really happened, is it really true? I blatantly ignored the fact that I got my period for the first time, to the point my mother had to convince me I had with some interesting bathroom evidence. This was made even worse by my…
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This is a tribute to my favourite pussy. A pussy I treated far better than my own. A pussy that taught my partner and I so much and, through his unexpected death this week, has weaved a delicate symmetry between his proud little life and my own mysterious pussy. This pussy was a bit…
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