Spiral by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris
We’re staring down a tin of Quality Street at the centre of our circle of seats when the church door bangs open. It’s a new bloke, crucifix dripping from his neck like a lanyard.
Remember your souvenir from Pride by Jenna Burns
It’ll burn on your skin. The problem is that you won’t put a whisper of sun cream on underneath; you’ll just slap the hard stick of face paint on under your eyes, faintly sweet like crayons, one long stripe, and you’ll think of the school fair, six years old at your favourite stand, begging to be made a tiger.
The Adoration of Borders by Gary Fincke
Once, Alex ate the same cereal for nine months because each carton earned a square inch of Alaska. “Eighteen, all told. You earned them,” his mother said when Alex was thirty-one, handing him the deeds the summer before she died.
One of the Six Million Speaks to a Great-Grandchild about Inherited Trauma by Cynthia Gordon Kaye
Tell your mother the truth, complicated boy. Illuminate your cramping collegiate mind-spills, logarithms, fruit flies, Shakespeare, splattered on plush beige carpet, unreachable from your bedridden grasps.
False Notes and Other Fragrances by Rowan Tate
From the time she was seven, Ketra could smell lies. Some reeked of burnt hair. Some of overripe plums. A half-truth had the scent of chewed mint, stale and thin.