Gemma Parker

A trick I developed in the late stages of my first pregnancy to forestall inquiries, concern, recommendations and advice about having a baby was to refer to her impending birth as “the apocalypse”. “I don't know,” I'd shrug. “We'll see what things look like after the apocalypse.” It was an effective strategy – there is not much advice you can give to a woman, after all, who is explicitly planning to navigate motherhood like a nuclear fallout.

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For a while I pick the glass Out of her hair, which is gorgeous— Ombre peach and gold. She holds my hand and won’t agree. I leave her in front of the tobacconist, Full of the language of murder. She wants more money than I have: I give her hand sanitiser. Did she ask me to leave Or did I just go? Hard against the night We forge, forgetting, forgetting. I clean my hands At a sushi restaurant, my thin hands, As weak as wheat. When I go to sleep I dream of them both, altered.