[Content warning: maternal mental health] It’s been so many years, now, that sometimes Gina doesn’t fully clock what month it is, until the dream returns. It cycles back like a weather pattern, a relapse. In the dream, she has left a small baby out on a summery back lawn. The daisy-starred grass soon swoops with…
Since my mother no longer rode her bike over the big railway bridge, her scarf coming loose in the billowing smoke, and since she no longer got to Funky Pumpkin running her hands over the big bins of kumara, since she was in fact at Pak’N’Save on a Tuesday afternoon at 2pm eyeing up the…
Bella calls out “where are you going?” as I run downstairs to the lounge and snatch my phone. I pause for a moment. Faint blue light is slipping into our dark flat. This house is a prison, Bella always says, but some of my favorite and most ridiculous memories have happened here. I realise with…
Yesterday, my mother and I sat down to a typical Fijian breakfast of buns and milky tea. A fruit bat, screaming the joys of eating a pawpaw outside my window, had kept me up for half the night. So, it was with tired anticipation that I packed a backpack for a half day cruise leaving…
Short fiction by Rowan Bishop