Mona watched them with dark, darting eyes as they dipped and tripped over the makeshift dance floor in the stuffy basement. Their laughter sounded high and clear, silky strands of hair catching the dim light and refracting it into a million shimmering sparkles. She gripped her cup, the plastic cracking between her fingers, the piss-warm and piss-taste beer threatening to overflow. Careful, careful, she chastised herself, easing her grip, forcing herself to relax. To ignore that itchy feeling between her shoulder blades. The tingling at her fingertips that drove her to something. Was it one of them? She puzzled over it while she watched, her eyes catching everything.

Izzy hugged her knees to her chest, her stomach a tight ball of humiliation. She was out on the verandah, sinking into a saggy floral couch. The city was doing its ridiculous Melbourne-summer thing, where the night was hotter than the day, and heat radiated off the asphalt in waves. She’d left the party to “get some air,” which was code for “cry where no one can see you.” You had to know the code for everything, that was important.

Sunsets are never beautiful here. Instead, it’s as though the sky burns red and hot, the lengthening shadows falling like ash, smudging and darkening everything they touch. This isn’t the comforting darkness of your cottage, where your grandmother’s well-worn furniture provided soft edges. (What did they do to your grandmother? Did they hang her like the others?)

Part 1. / Blackman knew lack / Of gravity before gravity / had a name / Black man flew before he was told to / Till the ground / Till the ground / Till the ground / Till he forget to look at the sky / Till Blackman forget he knew how to fly

“You’d have thought it’d be the musk, or the way he could rend me limb from limb at any moment,” said Carla thoughtfully, “but honestly it was the hairballs. You haven’t known gross until you step in a tiger hairball.” They all contemplated that for too long. Steph took a deep drink of her mimosa.

The storyteller sits on a plastic stool by the side of the street. Rickshaws trundle past; cars honk their horns. Cart vendors crying their wares (“Beef noodle soup! Dragon’s beard candy! Scallion pancakes!”) swear at him for getting underfoot on the sidewalk. Children, released from school gates in a delirious swarm, run shouting through the streets.

After years of roommates and sublets and shared bathrooms, other people’s beard trimmings in the sink and other people’s leftovers leaking a brown film into the refrigerator, Jude moved into a walnut shell. She went in feet first, arms locked overhead in a butterfly stroke, letting all the air out of her chest in one long exhale like a spelunker. Inside, it was snug. Cozy.

The first time Robin spent the night at my house was the first sleepover I had that there wasn’t some kind of complaint from under the eaves or deep in the walls. We were eight years old and Robin slept in a leopard-print sleeping bag that filled the space on the floor between my bed and the wall. “You still sleep with a nightlight.” And Robin’s tone wasn’t snotty and mean the way Tina’s had been. There was no unspoken baby at the end.

Princess Nivedita is one year old when a wizard named Yash locks her heart and steals the key. Nobody finds out who Yash is, for they never see him. The King calls for help in carving another key, but none of the keys fit. Nivedita becomes the Princess with the Locked Heart.

Much pain comes from the inability to understand metaphor, so let us state up front that there is no magic door. There are also no magic keys, mirrors, picture frames, or postage stamps. We hope this does not upset you. Remember, there are magic doors everywhere. We see we are speaking too plainly. Let us begin again.