oneword.: giraffe: "Under the bathroom, I buried it in the dust, I didn't want my sister to find it. It was MY Giraffe, all 8 inches tall, plastic and perfectly marked. I marvelled at it and marvelled that my cousin would give something so wonderful to ME! It would be safe in the dust. "

oneword.: seldom: "I seldom go there and yet that place lives in my mind and thoughts and in my soul. I walk those spaces, the sounds that live there echo in my head with every step. It is more real to me than any other place could ever be, yet now it is no longer the place of my memory, now it is my sister-in-law's house. "

oneword.: cardboard: "My love of fire all started with cardboard, we burnt all our flammable rubbish in the old copper, I would fill cardboard boxes with it and pile them on top of the copper. I spent hours looking for more things to burn and poking it with a stick. I learnt that burning plastic made interesting coloured flames. "

oneword.: wash: "It used to be my favourite day, I would offer to stay home and pile all the clothes into huge heaps on the porch, I would make biscuits, sitting on the back steps and holding the mixing bowl between my knees while the clothes swirled and then I would push them through the wringer and be lulled into happiness by the familiar rythym of the washing machine. That was what I would do to avoid mustering. I loved wash day. "

cafe
The room was long and the tables booths along the wall "Don't put your elbows on the table" said Grandma and I asked might I put my little elbows on it instead. She laughed loudly and I shrunk into myself, but later when she recounted the story to the family, and seeing the joy in her eyes, I was proud of my little elbows (wrists).

oneword.: anticipate: "Sometimes it is just far better to spend time anticipating an outcome than it is to actually experience the event. "

oneword.: home: "The years that I am not there don't make a difference, not the changing shape of the house, the aging faces or the new young ones. My home is still out there, out where the silence is so loud I sometimes want to scream, where the air is so dry and cold I do scream. "

oneword.: gray: "I thought it should be spelt 'grey', the other way just looks wrong to me, so this is where I am, stuck in that grey area. I don't know what will happen next, but inside I felt dead and grey and collapsed. "

oneword.: moose: "There was a guy called Moose in town, I think he was a friend of Keirans, one of those big thick-headed blonde boys, all muscle and suntanned shoulders. Deep voiced chuckles as I walked into the room, but never a word to me, just a straight blue-eyed stare. "

oneword.: goo: "I used to put the flour and the salt and the food colouring and what else was it? Oil? In the saucepan and make huge globs of coloured muck and my beautiful children would smear it all over my house their eyes glistening, full of laughter and this was happiness spelt g-o-o "

oneword.: ink: "In the drawer of the dresser in the sunroom, there were ink nibs there. My mother told me that they were used to write with but when I tried all I got was great blots of black ink spreading starshaped on the paper. "

oneword.: exchange: "What if I could do a swap, try that alternative reality to see what might have happened, what if I could exchange my life with hers? That other me who didn't fuck up? Would I like me any more or less? "

oneword.: solve: "If I could solve the problem then I wonder what else there would be left to do? If there was no problem then what would be the point? I wonder if we would bother getting out of bed at all if it were all already fixed? "