August, Once

There was glitter in my hair. When I moved it sparkled, fell, onto my hands, my lap. Stung. There was glitter and silence—so loud it hurt my ears. And a smell I knew but couldn’t place. Hot. Rusty. Sour.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’ Nobody answered.
I looked down. My neck hurt and at the corner of my eye, I saw my hair. Pink, like fairy floss, full of glitter.
‘Hey,’ I said again, louder. Still, nobody answered.
There was just silence. And glitter.
So much glitter.
So bloody quiet.

Tuesday, April

‘It’s been three years,’ Donna finished in a shaky voice. ‘And I still wake up every morning wondering if today’s the day.’ Donna was new. Under the fluorescent lights of a nondescript community room in Surry Hills, above a health food co- op and across the corridor from a tax accountant, she looked beige. Her beige- blonde hair hung over her chest, ends crunchy with frizz and bleach, and she wore a beige- blue cardigan, skinny beige hands poking out the ends, fingers curled around each other in her lap, fading into her beige- brown pants.
Like all of us, Donna thought she was going to die…

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