Published in Overland Issue 213 Summer 2013 Uncategorized Marrickville Fiona Wright Later that night, I cut the plastic boning from the bodice of my dress: no need for structure, over summer. There were bruises on my knees I didn’t recognise. I saw us all that day, all day projected on a big screen: the bathtub underneath the orange tree, crushed grass imprinted on my shins, your cat-like eyeliner, the warm sangria out of mugs. My feet grew numb beneath my hips. Saturation. I still felt overseen when I walked home, alone and shouldered. A black light flicked behind a balcony, a woman, neon-lit, crushed out a cigarette and turned to kiss, to give a kiss. This wasn’t meant to sound like romance. But it’s not ironic, either. Fiona Wright Fiona Wright’s new essay collection is The World Was Whole (Giramondo, 2018). Her first book of essays Small Acts of Disappearance won the 2016 Kibble Award and the Queensland Literary Award for nonfiction, and her poetry collections are Knuckled and Domestic Interior. More by Fiona Wright 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 6 February 20236 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali: listen, hear, think, understand from our sacred Mother Earth and our Water Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali Collective To winaga-li, Gomeroi/Kamilaroi people must be able to access Gunimaa. They must be able to connect and re-connect. Over 160 years of colonisation has privileged intensive agriculture, grazing and heavily extractive water management regimes, enabled by imposed property regimes and governance systems. Gunimaa and Gali still experience the violent repercussions of these processes, including current climate changes which are exacerbating impacts, as droughts become longer, floods and heat extremes become more intense, and climatic zones shift, impacting on species’ viability and biodiversity. 2 First published in Overland Issue 228 3 February 20233 February 2023 Fiction Fiction | Romeo and Juliet II: Haunted rentals Georgia Symons The hauntings are actually quite flamboyant here, though. Yeah, come in, come in. Not like my friend Moya’s house—it just has a tool shed that sometimes isn’t there and that’s it. So boring. Yes, you can keep your shoes on.