Published in Overland Issue 215 Winter 2014 · Uncategorized Castrato Michelle Cahill When the kitten with a dislocated limb is euthanised, you’ve stopped reading my blog, my sister refuses the call, a bargirl on the south side of Sydney is being shagged, when every contract is optional, the ping-pong game is over, the flat day reeks of a stinking premonition on the pretext of afternoon teacake, vanilla-iced, served with the luminous smiles of a stay-at-home mum to reprise me of the stakes I’ve gambled, make-up too bright, or remind me falciparum malaria hooks up to maggots glossing the trash heaps on Manus Island, page 6 – when the slush pile of supplier statements, invoices, failure-to-pays I’ve ignored becomes a pylon, having clocked up as many as twelve angry men who’d expect equality and dignity are unconditional? When I’ve almost crossed the desert hallucinating Lasseter’s cave, with a parasitic strangle when poetry raids every layer of self-respect so I can no longer read newsprint, let alone the opening sentence of my tenth surplus draft, syllable by syllable – I’ll start over like a teenage boy with secret admirers in the back seat of his mother’s 4WD, learning to curse before my voice breaks for the first time. Michelle Cahill Michelle Cahill is a Sydney writer. Her short story collection, Letter to Pessoa, won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing. She has received prizes in poetry and fiction. More by Michelle Cahill › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 19 April 2024 · Friday Fiction Stilted J.E “Mahal” Cuya One hour after midnight. Everyone in rooms. Living room – dark. Table look like monsters. Like death. TV on stand. Netflix Logo. No one watching. Residents asleep. They have dementia. 18 April 202418 April 2024 · Education A Jellyfish government in NSW: public education’s privatisation-by-neglect Dan Hogan A private school that receives public money is not a private school: it is a fee-paying public school. The overfunding of private schools using public money is a symptom of a public service that has been rotted for a quarter of century by a political class with no vision beyond producing dubious, misleading statistics to deploy at the next election.