This story was highly commended in the 2021 Feast Festival Short Story Competition in the emerging writers category. Feast is Adelaide’s largest annual queer arts and culture festival.
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Persephone James could not, with any amount of her logical reasoning, determine why she felt lonely. Her loneliness was weighted like a ball chained to the space between her breasts, tugging at her skin until it pulled away, creating hollow space around her heart. Her mind was always foggy with the same spiralling thought. Why was she lonely?
‘You alright, Seph?’ Angel passed the smouldering post-coital joint to her. Persephone placed the warm paper delicately to her lips and dragged deep. She turned her head to exhale a stream of cloudy white smoke through the open window and into the empty, purpling sky, then rolled over to face her bedmate. She adjusted the covers so there was no resistance when she entangled her legs with Angel’s and gently placed the joint between his lips.
She had started seeing Angel six month ago, after a chance encounter at a gig featuring one of their mutual friends. Their only mutual friend, as far as Persephone could tell. And he wasn’t even really a mutual friend, but a friend of a friend. Persephone didn’t care, she just wanted to get drunk and flirt with strangers, so she tagged along and ended the night in Angel’s bed, pleased with the idle pillow talk and the way he wrapped his arm around her in his sleep. But most importantly how little he seemed to even think about the fact that she was transgender.
Continue reading “Entirely Perfect in (Almost) Every Way”