When Leanna’s mother dies, her father takes up gardening. Purple loosestrife and puncture vines sprout from between his lips: winding up her mother’s tomato plants, covering Leanna’s window, clogging the neighbours’ eaves, injuring cattle and choking wetlands, blocking out the sun.
I sat down to make a list of the reasons we no longer sleep together—but there’s no list, just the one thing neither of us want to talk about.
Outside the sky is autumn dolphin blue. I let the salt slick my lashes when my mother isn’t looking. It isn’t flamingo season yet but I feel them coming down the rift and it saddens.
On the Island of hair—or the Hairy Island as it is otherwise known—visitors find their hair follicles unusually active. Hair sprouts from areas usually devoid of hair.