I was fanning myself with a textbook when the tradie told me about the gecko. It had, in search of reprieve from the burning meteorological irregularity, crawled inside our air conditioning unit, damaged the wiring, and gotten itself fried. Without climate control, we had suffered through December and January, red-faced and irritable.

There is, apparently, a certain psychology attributed to those who collect and hoard. I am not sure if I fit the mould of a subject suffering from early deprivation or having an intense fear of intimacy, but I am a collector. I collect endings. Each one is different in its own singular way. Maybe I even orchestrate them in my life: manipulate break-ups, terminations, conclusions, finales. Such a habit might be symptomatic of a particular disorder, possibly a certain form of masochism.

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.

A week after Tom left, Gus was yawning through a morning piss when the patter on the roof intensified to a rattle. Before he could shake the last few dribbles into the toilet bowl, the rattle swelled into a roar.

It’s me. I know it’s been a while…It’s about those things you gave me—the sea-monkeys. Yeah…They’re still alive. I’ve been keeping them in a jar of saltwater on the top shelf of the bathroom. No, no one can hear me. I’m calling because something about them has changed.

Memory’s a trickster, just not a very good one. It meddles with the mise-en-scéne of the music awards, faithfully recreating the tables and stage but inserting a children’s swing and climbing frame. It cut-and-pastes a sunbather plattered on a towel. A couple picnic on a rug.

A woman is lying on her back, disappearing into the sand. Bit by bit. First her belly, then her legs and lastly her feet. Her eyes are closed. She could be dreaming. She could be dead. From above on the boardwalk, Madeleine has an excellent view. A boy and a girl gleefully scoop and dump sand over the woman’s body. The mother must trust them not to get carried away and dump sand on her head.

I’m biking and I’m biking and this could be anywhere: Audrey Hepburn’s Rome on a mint-bodied Bianchi, or mid-80s Minneapolis on a hot pink BMX, or the Capetown M48 on a drop-bar Momsen. I’m pedalling and I’m pedalling, working my legs to the limits and when I finally catch the truck, I carabiner on, kur-klunk!

Although mothers and daughters were not an unusual subject, this triptych’s macabre, violent and sexual themes were unprecedented for the period. The first panel depicts a mother and teenage daughter reclining. Dark figures, which art critics have variously described as satyrs, devils or gargoyles, emerge from the mother’s mouth and hands.

Janusz tucks his mouth into his elbow, makes the shape of the word with his lips. He recognises the sound, insectile in the distance, pictures the plane on the runway, propellers whirling, ready to launch. He rolls his head so his cheek rests against his forearm, the open pages of his maths book a pillow beneath.

i feel you shiver-shift against my pillowed fingerprints feel the warmth of me slick your skin {dew-licked and humid} I walked to the gates of the Botanical Gardens in my formal pleated shorts, purchased especially for the occasion. I wanted this experience to be memorable. I wanted to impress.

‘We’re not going to tell you who the client is, because we don’t want your creativity, or your capacity for constructing a narrative, to be limited by a product or a brand. Because what we’ll be creating together this semester is more than that. It’s aesthetic, discursive. It’s embodied. Hopefully.’   Joe, our seminar tutor, […]

Over summer, part of our gang’s routine was blocking Marcus’s dad from leaving. We wanted to pretend to drive his sports car. Usually he was busy, but this time he moved into the passenger seat. Everyone took turns holding the wheel and playacting. When I sat down, he patted me on the knee.

You died last Tuesday, while we were both sitting on the couch watching a YouTube clip about hummingbird cake. When I think about it, it’s possible you actually died during the recommended video afterward: Super easy beginner’s guide to peanut praline.

It took just under two hours to drive to the beach because there were two breakdowns on the M5. We were all melting into the leather seats. At one point Dad began to complain about the drive and Mum told him it wasn’t even midday so he better not start. Then she said, ‘You’re smoking again?’

He reaches for the bottle (the cheapest red, for old times’ sake) and pours himself another glass. I realise he’s trying to close the distance between us, the single piece of empty space in this voguish Italian spot he’d been recommended. But I’ve said the wrong thing. The distance will remain.