The LoviOne box had been pried open a week ago, yet its contents still remained strewn on the wooden table in the kitchen like organs ripped from a body cavity. The instructions sheet, with its endless list of side effects and warnings, was half unfolded and damp from a small pool of espresso leaking on the table, but the label on the box was still glossy, emergency contraception still clearly legible. Ella was sitting alone at the kitchen table facing the door to her terrace, looking out onto the backsides of all the surrounding apartment complexes while absentmindedly fingering the aluminum-covered plastic that had housed the small pill. Her back was curved over, shoulders pulled up to her ears with the demeanor of a defeated soldier returning from battle.
The table underneath her elbow was sticky. Small tufts of fallen tobacco from countless rolled cigarettes in the past few days sprouted from the smooth wood like hair in tight coiled patches. It was almost 4 in the afternoon, and she still hadn’t eaten; the gnawing in her stomach a vicious reminder that her body was empty. She shifted her elbow so that she could rest her chin on her hand, her skin peeling up from the sticky spots. She pulled at a particularly long strand of tobacco, watching it straighten then bounce back into its curled form as she released it. She tried to gather the strength needed to make herself something, a meal composed of whatever hadn’t begun to grow a fuzzy layer of green in her fridge. And she thought about Abigail; her thoughts always returned to her daughter when she needed strength. They would go to the park together every day. She would smell of fresh air and have bruises on her knees because she would be brave. Ella wouldn’t stop her from climbing on things but would tell her to concentrate and be sure of the next place she was going to put her little feet. Ella’s hands would always be a few inches away ready to catch her if she fell, and Ella’s life would no longer feel so unfinished, so incomplete.
The sun was just starting to set, the light sharp and direct as it shone through the large glass panels of the door to the terrace. Dust and particles of dead skin hung in the air and reflected the golden light, filling the kitchen with what could’ve been fairy dust. There was a painting on the wall above the table, a close depiction of a field, the frame filled with weeds and purple wildflowers as if the artist had laid down on the ground to paint it, face tickled by the swaying growth.
The clear skies always brought people out onto their balconies to hang and dry their laundry and today the wind was strong; sheets and pillowcases flapped like tongues that were still trying to form words after having been cut out of the mouth. Ella stood up in a gasping burst of energy, her chair sliding across the linoleum tile with an upsetting screech and opened the glass door. Wisps of hair fell from her week-old bun, the wind lifting them where they curled onto the nape of her neck. She wanted to hear the cloth whispering. Stepping out onto the terrace she could faintly as it underscored the louder sounds of people speaking and boilers humming and further away on the street below the honking of cars. But the other sounds distracted her from listening and she couldn’t understand the movement of the fabrics, pale fingers gripping the railing tightly, knuckles turning white from the force. Her hands were long and slender but ended abruptly in nails that had been gnawed on down to the cuticle; angry red skin at her fingertips that had been prematurely forced into contact with the world.
On a terrace directly across from her and three stories above, an older woman was preparing to hang a sheet. She clasped one end tightly in her hands and decisively whipped it up and down several times as if she knew that Ella was trying to understand and was trying to make it easier for her, clarifying the sound the way you might speak to someone who was just starting to learn a language- slow and over enunciated.
On a balcony to her right, she watched a man whose curtain had been flung upwards by the wind, which was picking up now. The long fabric had gotten stuck on the railing of the balcony above and he was poking at it with the long handle of a broom, trying to shake it loose. His wife stood next to him, her curly blonde hair escaping from her ponytail and flying around her head as the wind blew. She wore a necklace around her neck, and as she spoke to her husband she clasped the cross that hung from it and moved it up and down the length of the silver chain. Both of them leaned over the railing to peer upwards at the curtain. Their attention was so focused on getting the curtain down that only Ella noticed their small boy, around 4 or 5, join them outside. The small face he turned upwards to follow their gaze was claimed by childhood with cheeks that were round and full, his arms and legs disproportionately lanky.
As Ella watched, he grasped the railing of the balcony and pulled himself up onto it. His small bare feet balanced on the flat iron rail, back towards Ella, thin arms reaching upwards to grasp the heavy blue fabric of the curtain. The mother screamed and at the same moment the father wrapped a strong arm around the child’s waist. The curtain released whatever it had been caught on, billowing outwards with a sound like a thick exhale. The boy seemed to hang in the air as the curtain fell behind the three of them and swayed, gradually stilling as the child’s feet returned to earth. The mother crossed herself over and over again, looking up into the sky and back down to her boy, intermittently shaking her head and taking his face in her hands before going back to cross herself. The family was now standing in front of the thick curtain, their terrace a stage as they took their final bows for Ella.
The wind carried with it a chill and felt like it was blowing right through Ella’s bare legs as she stood in only underwear and a thin cotton tank top watching them. It lifted the fabric of her shirt away from her body, the odor of her unwashed body flying up into her face and she grimaced, recoiling. Pushing the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass, tired eyes surrounded by the purple of exhaustion. She quickly lowered her eyes and set her jaw tightly as she walked back into the kitchen, trying to escape herself. Her phone started buzzing, vibrating the tabletop, the screen announcing an unknown number. She declined it with one hand while opening the fridge with the other.
The fridge had three small shelves. The top two were totally empty, the third held only a small bottle of coffee creamer and a carton of six eggs, in which two remained. The vegetable drawer below the last shelf had one whole orange in and one that had been sliced down the center, and a full cucumber. She stood in the dull gray light for a moment surveying these prospects while leaning slightly against the door. Ketchup packets and a half-drunk bottle of wine, she hadn’t gone grocery shopping in two weeks at least.
Fruits turn the fuzziest when they mold, with soft spores and fur like an animal, deli meat goes next with its skin turning a dappled green. Cheese just forms a soft dust, which barely counts. It is made to age, only increasing in value with each passing year. Ella never bought it. The cucumber in the vegetable drawer was old enough her finger left a rounded dent in its slimy skin when she went to touch it, though on the outside there was no hint of spoilage. The oranges also appeared fine at first, but as she went to pick up the half, rotating it revealed a blueish green mold sprouted in a perfect circle on its insides, the part she had wanted to eat. She stared at the soft white spores and the bumpy green, mesmerized, holding the orange close enough to her face to watch the fuzzy white spores sway with her breath. Turning suddenly, she grabbed the yellow plaid kitchen towel from where it hung over the oven handle and laid it flat on the countertop.
She placed the orange into the towel and folded it up and around, tucking in the corners so that the mold stuck out of the top like thin white hairs. Looking down at it for a second, she furrowed her brow, then quickly unwrapped it before adding the other whole orange, layering it on top of the half and applying a bit of pressure so that it settled into the moldy cavity. Rewrapping both again in the towel, she took the bundle into her arms then and slowly, hands trembling as if she knew she shouldn’t, ran one finger over the mold like she was caressing the face of a child, taking care not to disturb its hair so that it might sleep.
“Abigail,” she whispered.
Her phone began to buzz again, and she walked back over to the table where it sat. She tapped it once and the buzzing stopped. Bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet she began to feel a pressure below her stomach, a fullness she both relished and dreaded. Pacing up and down the kitchen, she rocked the oranges and reveled in the sensation past the point of discomfort as it tiptoed across the threshold into pain with the passing minutes. She put the oranges down, making sure that the top orange was supported by her fingers until it rested on the tabletop.
“Don’t worry, my darling,” she said under her breath. “I’ll be right back.”
She adjusted the towel around them, then walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
The door to the bathroom was shut. She stood in the hall shifting her weight from left foot to right foot and biting at the nail on her middle finger while staring at it, brow furrowed and muscles beginning to clench from the strain of holding her bladder. A light pressing on the soft low curve of her stomach confirmed that there was no other option, and she winced, shaking her head. The only mirror left in the apartment hung above the sink in the bathroom. As she placed her hand on the doorknob, she shut her eyes tightly and began to count.
“One, two, three…” She was inside the bathroom now, eyes still shut firmly. She knew the shower was on her left so kept herself oriented by keeping the wall just barely brushing her right shoulder.
“Four, five, six, seven,” she bumped into the sink with her knee, which meant the toilet was on her left directly opposite it.
“Eight, nine, ten,” tugging her underwear down she sat down and let her muscles relax, releasing a strong stream. The relieving sensation stopped her counting momentarily as she breathed in deeply.
And then she was empty. Feeling around on the wall with her right hand, her fingers found the toilet paper roll.
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen,” she stood, quickly patting herself dry with one hand while tugging up her underwear with the other. This had become her routine. She usually made it back into the hallway in thirty seconds and washed her hands in the kitchen sink, but as she moved the elastic band in her underwear up her left thigh her nose filled with the scent of copper. Tilting her head downward but keeping her eyes shut, her hand moved along the length of fabric until her fingers found the patch of wetness, slippery and thick, coagulated blood fresh enough that the soft cotton hadn’t yet been soaked through. She collected it onto her fingertips, pinching and breaking up the plasma between her thumb and index finger rhythmically like she was administering CPR on a tiny heart, trying to remind her dying insides what it meant to have a pulse.
“Oh, Abigail,” she whispered.
She was almost 44, her mother’s last period had been at 45. And so, in the way that the ordinary is honored when experienced for what could be the last time, she coated her fingers in the cells her body had made.
Hot tears squeezed from the tiny space underneath her closed eyelids, collecting on her eyelashes before falling. She had lost her count. She pulled the bloody underwear back up, not able to abandon it and comforted by the close warm wetness between her legs. Heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her ears, she returned to the kitchen.
Her oranges were nestled once more into the crook of her elbow and she caressed them with blood covered fingers, leaving red tracks down the featureless face. Her heart rate slowed. Then she resumed her bouncing.
The LoviOne box was still sitting on the table, staring back at her. She felt its nonjudgmental gaze. I am just a box, it seemed to say. She thought about the woman on the terrace clutching her cross, then picked up the box and dragged a chair over to the shelves in the kitchen with one hand, the other still holding the oranges. Standing on the chair she balanced the box on the tallest one, so the glossy lettering LoviOneoverlooked the whole room, watching over her, her moldy fruit, her whole small life.
Climbing down from the chair she began collecting the tobacco piles from the tabletop into her free hand, throwing them in the sink. Then she wiped down the table with a paper towel dampened with warm water, the whole time rocking her oranges gently with her other arm. There was a knock at the door. She adjusted the towel around the oranges and went to answer it wearing just her underwear and tank-top, forgetting that her body was a thing that could be seen and not just a sack that she was puppeting. It always felt like the real Ella was floating somewhere a few inches above.
The person standing on the other side of the door had brown hair cut shoulder length and broad shoulders, over which draped a light blue denim shirt. When Ella opened the door, they were looking at a clipboard and only glanced up briefly to greet her before returning to it.
“Hello. Are you Ella Invince?”
Ella stroked the side of the towel with her thumb.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Here to fix the shower, my name’s Theo from Perth Plumbing, we tried to call earlier this afternoon to confirm the time, but no one answered.”
“Oh, I never answer my phone,” she said lightly.
Theo looked up for the first time then, landing first on the bundle in Ella’s arms then settling on her face.
“You did call us to fix it though, didn’t you?”
“No. It’s not broken.”
Theo’s eyebrows knit themselves together and they bit their lower lip.
“Huh. Okay. Weird. Give me a second, would ya?”
“Sure.”
Theo stepped away, moving further down the hall, leaving Ella standing in the doorway. They pulled a phone out of the back pocket of their Carhartt cargo pants and spoke softly into it. Ella could hear everything even though she wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.
“410 Elmwood right? Yeah, I’m here, but she says it’s not broken. Who said it was dripping? Oh okay, alright, yeah no I’ll try, but if she doesn’t want it fixed it’s not like I can force myself in, no, no it’s not that she’s not letting me, but if she didn’t call. I mean if she doesn’t want…” they paused, nodding their head. “Yeah, okay. Okay. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” Theo said again, this time turning back to address Ella while cramming the phone back in their pocket.
“It looks like your downstairs neighbor called us. Something is leaking through the wall in her bathroom and my boss thinks it’s a problem with the length of the whole pipe. You must’ve noticed a difference in the water pressure. Mind if I have a look?”
Ella stepped aside, leaving them room in the doorway to enter. She did not mention how much time had passed since she’d last used her shower. As Theo passed by her, they glanced down once more at the bundle in her arms, but didn’t say anything.
“This the bathroom?” Theo asked, stopping in front of the shut door next to the kitchen and placing their left hand on the doorknob.
Ella didn’t respond, instead moving in closer to them with an inquisitive look. Theo was grasping the round brass doorknob firmly in 4 fingers, like the talon of a bird perched on a branch. She shifted the weight of the oranges into the crook of her left arm and with her right reached out and placed her fingers gently over theirs, her thumb hanging unused so that it mirrored Theo’s empty space. They were standing so close that Theo could see the sweat beading on Ella’s upper lip, the protrusion of her cupid’s bow. They were taller than she was and, looking down, could see her brown hair streaked with a few strands of gray was greasy at the roots. Where it fell out of her bun it curled gently up around her face, baby hairs splaying across her back and shoulders. They could also see her oranges poking out of the towel in her arms but had decided that it was none of their business.
“You’re missing a finger,” she said looking up at them, shoulders relaxing as she spoke.
“Yeah, I am.”
“The thumb.”
“Yes.”
“Did someone take it from you?”
“What?”
“Did someone take your finger from you?”
“Um, no. No. I got a car door closed on it as a kid. Had stuck my hand in where it shouldn’t have been, and it got sliced clean off when my dad closed the door.”
“Do you think it was the car door’s fault, then? Or your dad’s cause he’s the one that closed it?”
“I guess it was the car door’s fault. He didn’t mean to; I mean, he didn’t do it to hurt me on purpose. He probably didn’t see me, thought I had already gone inside the house or something.”
“But you can still repair things and stuff?”
“Yeah, yeah of course I do. Just had to learn to manage a bit differently, I guess.” They broke eye contact for a moment and glanced involuntarily down at the oranges in Ella’s arm before looking back at her.
“Was hard at first, especially as a kid, but now I definitely manage,” they continued slowly, thinking their way through the sentence as they spoke each word aloud. “We’re…adaptable creatures, you know. Humans, I mean. We can figure it out, a way, I mean, eventually. To keep going.”
They paused and studied Ella’s fingers, which were still overlapping their own.
“Was there lots of blood, then?” Ella asked.
“When?”
“When you lost your thumb.”
“Oh. Yeah, probably. I don’t remember much of it to be honest. That’s one of the ways I overcame it, I guess. Selective memory.”
“Do you want something to drink?”
“What?”
“Something to drink. Some water or something?”
Theo slid their hand out from underneath Ella’s and stuck it in the front pocket of their pants, nodding in agreement. They walked in silence to the kitchen and Ella washed a glass before filling it with water.
“Why do you have that up there?” they asked, sitting down at the table and gesturing upwards to the LoviOne box.
“Well, it didn’t technically kill my baby,” Ella said, handing them the water and shrugging her shoulders.
“It’s just a box. It didn’t have a choice,” she continued. “It didn’t choose to hold that kind of pill, it could’ve been any kind of box, really, meant to hold anything. It didn’t have a choice. Really it was the pill inside that killed my baby. ”
“Oh,” was all that Theo said.
“And it was watching me. I wanted to give it a better view.”
“Instead of throwing it away? It wouldn’t be able to watch you from inside a trash can.”
Theo didn’t know whether it was the innocence in the tone of Ella’s voice or the directness of her responses, but they found it easy to enter the world she had created for herself and followed her thoughts with curiosity, while simultaneously very aware that the responsibility of maintaining the social boundaries typical of two strangers rested solely on their shoulders.
“I don’t like to throw things out. Who am I to decide that something doesn’t serve some kind of purpose, just because it doesn’t serve me,” she responded.
“You don’t mind feeling watched?”
“No. I’d rather feel watched than feel alone.”
They studied Ella’s face and opened their mouth as if they wanted to say something else, but Ella was focused on the box and she looked so peaceful. So they sat and watched the box with her. Nothing moved except a beam of light on the wall as the sun set, disappearing behind a building. Then a banging on the door interrupted their shared silence.
“Ella? Ella are you in there?”
Ella looked at Theo and shook her head.
“Ella, I know you’re in there, I’m coming in.”
A set of keys could be heard on the other side of the door, the lock clicked and turned and the door swung open. The man who appeared in the doorway to the kitchen was twice Ella’s height and nearly four times her width. He had a bushy brown beard that seemed to work like Velcro, with bits of previous meals clinging in its folds. He leaned against the doorframe while spinning the ring of keys around his index finger. He looked as though he was preparing to piss around the perimeter of the kitchen.
“I think I’d better get started on the shower,” Theo said, rising from the table and leaving the room.
“Who’s that,” the man asked as the bathroom door creaked open its hinges, followed by the sound of a faucet turning on and off again.
“How did you get the keys, Douglas,” Ella said, staring at her hands in her lap, interlacing and separating her fingers and ignoring his question.
“Your mom hooked me up. She likes me,” he said, laughing. The white T-shirt he was wearing was too small for him, and his gut poked out underneath, covered in short black hair. When he laughed it jiggled up and down.
Ella had gone paper white except for two circles of pink that had begun to blossom on her cheeks. She looked like a porcelain doll that might shatter at any moment. By this time the blood had soaked through her underwear and was beginning to stain the inside of her thighs a bright red where they connected to her pelvis.
“Right, well, I’ve just come to say that I don’t know who the fuck you think you are to just stop responding to my texts like that. Your mom is one thing, but me?”
Ella fixed her gaze on the painting of the weeds and felt a small stream of blood begin to run down her right thigh. The paint was dull, individual weeds impossible to make out now that the sun had set. What should’ve been a frame full of life persisting was just a black mass on the wall in the blue darkness of the kitchen.
“She keeps calling me to see if you are okay,” Douglas was saying. “I told her I was helping you.”
“I would’ve done it alone.”
“Raise a kid? Like hell you would’ve- you can barely take care of yourself. When’s the last time you showered?” He asked patronizingly and smiled, raising his eyebrows and daring her to answer.
Ella looked back down at her oranges and didn’t respond.
“That’s what I thought. Just get on with your fucking life already. Your mom keeps calling me to see if you’re okay, so I told her I’d come see you. What do you want me to tell her?”
“What is it that you see?”
“That you need me. It’s only been a week and look at the state you’ve got yourself into, sitting in your own filth and self-pity.” Douglas suddenly moved as he spoke, closing the space between them in two long strides
“You’ve got to get a grip.” His movement startled Ella. She jumped backwards and as she did the weight in her arms disappeared. Douglas, with a sweep of his hand, knocked the bundle to the ground.
She didn’t have enough time to formulate words, only a warbled cry that clawed its way out of her throat as she stretched out her arms to try and catch them. The oranges rolled from her fingertips and fell to the floor between them, exploding like bombs across the linoleum kitchen tile. The kitchen warped and danced as tears corrupted her vision. She stood in the wet pulpy flesh, clinging to the empty kitchen towel and bent halfway over the body she could not see as it clenched around her tears and refused to let them fall. Douglas’s laughter filled the space, the sound too big for the kitchen. It overpowered the short, jagged breaths that were wrenching out of Ella’s lungs. In their aging process the oranges had undergone a sort of fermentation and in their small death had filled the kitchen with the strong smell of citrus and undertones of earth and must.
“You killed my baby,” she whispered.
“You’re insane. They are moldy oranges. If anything, they were already dead.”
Reaching down she gathered as much of the corpse as she could fit in her hands. A screechy sob ripped through her as she lunged forward blinded by grief, fists clenched around the orange flesh and peel. She found his beard first and used it as a guide, estimating where his other features were as tears ran down her face and she released her orange-filled punches over and over into his eyes and nostrils. He struggled against her and tried to say something, which allowed her to ram them into his mouth. In an attempt to push her off he caught the neckline of her undershirt, ripping it open down to her navel and so she sunk her nails into the soft skin of his cheeks, clinging to him like a wild animal all claws and rage and ripping deep gnashes down the sides of his face. She hoped the acidity made it burn. The adrenaline left as quickly as it had come, and in the end he shoved her limp body her up against the wall and left quickly, throwing
“Crazy bitch,” over his shoulder before the door slammed behind him.
The undersides of her nails full of orange and skin she sank to her knees like she was mourning at a grave. Gathering what remained of the oranges into the palms of her hands she pressed them to her bare chest and then into her face and hair as if trying to absorb them into her body. The juice ran down over her exposed breasts and around her closed eyes, mixing with the tears and the blood that seeped between her legs. She was drowning. She cried and rocked herself until all that remained of her oranges was stuck to her skin and dripping through her hair.
“Ella?” Theo’s voice came from above her like a piece of driftwood in the ocean.
“He covered my mouth and held my nose until I swallowed the pill, you know,” Ella said into the darkness. “Because the condom broke inside me. I know she would’ve come to me this time. I know it, if he had let her. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten,” she said, her voice breaking as she suppressed another sob. “Her name could’ve been Abigail.”
Ella heard Theo sit down next to her, boots squelching over the sticky linoleum, followed by the sound of metal skittering across the floor. She flinched reflexively, then sighed with relief. Douglas had forgotten to take the key.
“Are you upset with me?” Ella asked.
They weren’t touching, but Theo was close enough that she could feel their breath on her shoulder.
“Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
Instead of responding Theo took her hand and raised it up to their face, letting her fingertips trace their features. It was as if they knew Ella needed to get as close as she could, that in a darkness as deep as this facial expressions were useless and words could not be trusted. The only thing Ella could know was what she could hold in her hands. She felt the ridge of their smooth brow and their high cheekbones and their breath warm on her hand. Their presence was gentle and unthreatening, quietly asserting life in a room full of corpses. Her fingers pressed lightly against their lips as they spoke.
“You don’t have to apologize. You’ve done nothing wrong.” They paused. “Let me help you?”
The juice and pulp from the oranges had dried and suddenly Ella felt like her skin was too tight, that it was straining to stretch across her bones. Her hair had completely fallen from the elastic and was matted down her back in clumps and knots. She nodded.
“Come. I fixed the shower. They’ll have to replace the pipe downstairs, but your end was an easy fix.”
They helped her up and led her through the dark apartment to the bathroom. She crossed the threshold with her eyes open wide, blinking hard and sniffling. As Theo turned on the faucet and hot water began to pour from the shower head, Ella looked down at herself.
““I could’ve held a beautiful life in here,” she said.
“You already do, Ella,” they said, turning away from her to adjust the water’s temperature. “Yours.”
Ella lifted her head to look at them and they felt her gaze between their shoulder blades but didn’t turn around.
She moved past them to stand in front of the sink, her chest and torso bare in the mirror’s reflection. Small streams of blood were running down the inside of her thighs and behind her knees as she free-bled through her underwear. The small room was quickly starting to fill with steam and her reflection was disappearing. Abigail would want her to be brave, she thought, reaching up to wipe some of the moisture away so that she could look at the lower curve of her stomach, caressing the exposed skin and framing it with her fingers. She turned sideways, taking herself in from all angles.
Theo made sure to close the door to the bathroom behind them. In the entryway they crouched and unzipped the bag they had set down by the door, pulling out a series of rags, a roll of paper towel, and a bottle of unopened disinfectant. A piece of plastic around the cap held it shut. Theo held the bottle in their left hand and gripped the seal tight between their index and middle finger, twisting the bottle away from their body. The plastic seal broke under their firm 4 fingered grasp. Then they poured some of the liquid out and wiped the linoleum until their boots no longer stuck to the floor.
In the bathroom Ella turned away from the mirror. Abigail sat on the closed lid of the toilet and swung her small legs gently back and forth, three small yellowing bruises outlined in soft purples and blues on her right shin. She watched as her mother stepped out of the bloody underwear and slid the ripped undershirt off her shoulders. Ella knew her instantly, had always known her. She wore denim shorts and a sage green t-shirt, and her hair was long and straight. She smelled of citrus and dirt. Tilting her head to one side she smiled at Ella, revealing a gap where her lower front tooth should be.
“My beautiful girl,” Ella whispered to her.
“Mama is right here. I’ll be out so soon,” she said as she slid open the glass door and stepped into the shower. “You just sit tight.”
The hot water made her skin tingle and shiver as it ran down her hair and over her shoulders, bits of pulp and peel falling from her body and splattering lightly against the tile. With her toes she nudged them, letting the water carry them the rest of the way down the drain. Through the water droplet covered glass of the shower door she smiled back at Abigail, who sat quietly watching her. Then Ella wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her head into her chest, grateful to her body for continuing to hold her up under the water’s warm stream.
Lea Singer is a native New Yorker currently finishing her BA in Creative Writing and Philosophy at Goucher College. In her writing she examines gender norms with a surrealist approach. Her work can be found in Goucher’s literary magazine The Preface but this her first appearance in a journal for grown ups!
