Category: Journal

My psychologist says that my pain is a trigger for me. He’s right. It happens when my arms and neck burn for weeks with neuropathic pain like hot needle pricks bubbling and fizzing ceaseless and seizing up my muscles so my hands grow tight and numb. This is when I start the stories about blame […]

I’ve been trying to make up for lost time, haven’t I? I’ve been trying to play catch up in a race that is rigged by forces beyond my control and perhaps exists only in my head. A competition between myself and imaginary rivals with doubters and detractors watching from the sidelines. “I told you so” […]

(Note: This was written for a desktop and formats badly on a mobile phone.) Maybe I could try a little harder to be a little less suck in that gut pin up that skin oil those surgery scars but the makeup can’t conceal the way recent trauma aged me and I can’t always avoid eye-contact […]

Just around this time last year, my husband Wes whisked me away in an aeroplane for an emergency holiday in Bali. I say “emergency” because that is how it felt to him, digging deep into his tax return, he flew me to a place that was tropical and vibrant as a means of emotional resuscitation, […]

My incredible friend Tawhanga wrote a beautiful piece here that I highly recommend reading. Tawhanga and I went to art school together, Waiariki Insitute of Technology in Aotearoa and Tawhanga is one of the people dearest to my heart and art. Here’s a quote that I almost gave a standing ovation, despite reading it alone in […]

How did we get here? Like you’re a stranger I always knew or actually I think I always imagined you but now you’re here and I can touch you and I keep thinking maybe I’m making you up but the details are so much more than my notions and daydreams and longings. I never thought […]

You’re treading water in a vast and dark ocean full of sunken memories and shipwrecked dreams. I’m in my little boat with my little lamp, a carefully protected firelight. Dotted in the distance I can see other boats, other little lights that bob up and down. We communicate with words that float across the water […]

A couple of times in my life, people have been angry at me for the way I cling to hope and beauty. I have been called naive, childish, ridiculous. My first love told me that my sunny optimism was sickening. Desperate attempts have been made to snuff my sunshine.  I didn’t let it happen and […]

The impact of his hand on the side of my face is microscopic oblivion and my reaction is addiction. His hand around my throat is paralysis and my option is endurance. His foul words in my ear are humiliation and my eyes close in avoidance. His cock forced sudden inside my ass is agony and […]

You have a glow to you like moonlight, when I squint I swear I can see it. It suffuses your skin with an opalescent iridescence that feels like magic, like nostalgia, as if you’re a friend from a childhood we never had. I want to discover secret spaces with you, our eyes wide with curiosity […]