1. My gramps’s laugh. He laughed like a child on a swing. Not like the laughter of the child on the swing, but like the child moving on the swing. In and out. His laugh was like a bellows being squeezed, but if the bellows had
To my dear and beautiful daughters, I hope that when someone breaks your heart (and they will), that they do it all at once. A bombshell. A bit of knowledge so exquisitely disarming that it shatters your heart to pieces in a singular moment and they are everywhere,
Last week I sat down to write a piece for uni. It was a total open topic: any subject, fiction or non-fiction, as long as it had a narrative thread. Literally anything. I sat at my desk and I thought about everything I had the wits to
When I was eleven I watched a brothel be raided. It was one of two brothels from my childhood. The first was a neighbour's duplex, a tiny carpeted place in which I babysat her children. She didn't fit my teenage view of sex work: she was
Someone sent me this question on ask.fm: It's interesting that Amanda Palmer is the kind of person of whom people ask this question. There's a certain loadedness to it: you wouldn't say "what do you think about Nelson Mandela?" or "what do you think about people
At the end of last year, when I was very angry, I wrote down some goals for 2014. Then I literally gave 2013 the finger, ate some pizza with my kids and thought about driving into the sea. I'm pleased to report that 2014 has been kind
Hey kid, I came in to check on you tonight and you were still and warm under the blankets. I don't know if you know this, but your cheeks flush red when you're dreaming. Tonight I put my fingers on them and noticed how your skin
When I was born, my Nan was 76 and had hair like buttercream. She had been waiting for me, she said, as I'm sure she did of all of her great-grandchildren. I knew I was her favourite because she let her hands rest on my
A while ago, Michael's grandfather died. He was in his mid-90s and had been deteriorating for some time. Nothing specific, just age and frailty. I called my nanna and told her of this. It's sad, I said, but he had a good life. She was perplexed. Why did
My mother doesn't take shit from anybody. She is kickarse in all the ways available. She is an empowered and balanced and amazing woman. If she weren't my mother already, I would wish that she were. Probably. No offense to my other, hypothetical mother. As far as
When I was in my late teens, I went to Sydney to search for the person I loved. I had had my heart broken and I cradled its pieces in my carry-on luggage and we went to look for a new start together. In the first