These Our Actors

by Reilly Loughlin

I brew a pot of jasmine tea, the same kind my mother drinks. How we disembowel each other.
A group of crows is a murder and so is a houseful of women. My mother likes small spaces; I
am claustrophobic. I ask my grandmother what she had for dinner and she replies, grief, always
grief. My sister stares at her own frozen face onscreen: Narcissus perpetua; caught between
obsession and disgust. I live with my mouth stuffed full of bees. I’m always look how much
hurt I can swallow, or, look how much pain I can cause. I wear my mother’s shadow. This very
room is pregnant. Women tripping over women, the spectacle of daughter and daughter folded
like origami until no one knows who is who. I drink my wine. Someone else drinks her jasmine
​tea. I tie up my hair. I shed my wants like snakeskin and do my best not to forget my lines.

Reilly Loughlin was raised in the Northern Rivers in NSW, and recently completed her Bachelor of Writing at UQ. You can find her in UQ’s Exordium issue 11, arguing the merits of fanfiction, or in Jacaranda Journal edition 11.2. She enjoys wooden floorboards, pelicans, and hosting dinners for her friends.