Everything is as it should be, though neither you nor I would recognise the hints and shifts beneath the written surface. There is a woman made of needles, though not the kind that pricks your finger so you sleep for a hundred years, or until a stranger enters your chamber with all of its suppressed connotations; nor even the kind that litters the phone box outside the 7-11, that makes you scratch your tender forearm before you realise what you’re doing, and then feel a guilt that has never truly been your own. Don’t overthink it. Beneath her lights and fabrics, she is pine needles, secret as the forests we have only flown over on our way to safer cities, bursting with beasts still sweating from the hunt. Predator or prey? There are party games in her slate grey eyes, and nobody’s expecting to lose.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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