Sublime

Hearing those familiar intonations was enough to excite Kemi and conjure up memories of her own family. She eavesdropped, soaking up the cultural source that was her lifeline.

There was me, of course, another matter altogether, innocent of apartments, soft beds, or food, a candidate, therefore, for affection, but, as Giovanni’s mome, out of honorable reach. Their only means, practically at least, of conveying their affection for Giovanni and me was to relieve us of these two old men. So that there was added, to the roles

Taking their school uniforms from the tumble dryer on Wednesday nights, Ivan’s little claret-coloured tracksuit and Peter’s shirt and trousers, hot, crackling with static. And in the morning, warming milk on the range.

brilliant young daughter, reckoned her

I remembered what it was to be a river stone. A hummingbird. A storm cloud. A leopard. A drop of rainwater.

It has taken me seven or so years to realise that I don’t much care for being a woman: that what I fell in love with at the first university women’s campaign meeting where I realised the word trans applied to my queerness, was being a dyke among dykes. It’s no small thing that my embarrassing Lacanian mirror moment happened just after I’d been fuck

them all.” We fell silent for a moment.

“I am not fully known to myself because part of what I am is the enigmatic traces of others.”