Free Love on the Road 2015 by Sam Tranum

time. The Atomium was originally created to promote the use of atomic energy, in an era when we were even less aware of its long-term problems and uncertainties than we are now. (Half of Belgium’s power comes from nuclear power stations.) We took the stairs up to the restaurant, where we had a drink and looked out over the city. A son et lumiere show in one of the spheres delighted us, lights projected onto a multi-faceted sculpture in the centre of a dark room. Another sphere housed sleeping pods for children on overnight school trips.
    Saturday didn’t bring you the rest and recovery you needed. My sister hosted a family reunion. It was the first time you’d got together with your brother and sister for more than eleven years. All families have skeletons in proverbial cupboards, and ours was taken out and given a good kicking that day. It was time for forgive and forget – and, by the way, your brother is now your sister, be nice and say hello. It is always the people who are closest that are affected the most by major change, so we were prepared for some raw emotions about your transition.
    My sister glued together all the factions with the best adhesive of all: food. Her dining table groaned under theweight of twenty curries. I’d made a cake. Your siblings were reserved to start with. My brother-in-law made tentative moves between watching football with the guys, and sitting between both his sisters in the garden. A sweltering sun beat down onto reddened shoulders. Your sister took a small cloth bag out of her purse and gave it to you. Inside was a tiny wristwatch. It had been your mother’s. Two toddlers, one from your family the other from mine, skirted around each other, avoiding one another with careful precision. The adults, however, had reconnected. We were pleased but exhausted at the end of the day.
    That was nearly a year ago. Not long after the reunion, we returned to New Zealand. Your wounds slowly healed, people became accustomed to using your new name. We launder your work uniforms, and there are skirts and blouses rather than trousers and shirts. I carry a drawing in my handbag of a specific type of vibrator recommended by the psychologist. I haven’t ventured into a sex shop to purchase one. I can’t see that it would offer any benefits over the one we already own. We are not perfect, we fight and bicker like any other couple. We laugh a lot too.
    You will have completed a year of living in your new gender by July, eligible for the next stage. The recommendations have been made, and the psychologist and endocrinologist have forwarded letters. You are undergoing another round of pre-operative blood tests and X-rays. You have asked me if I’d be prepared to use my annual leave to accompany you to Thailand for your surgery. I have said yes.
    After more than thirty years, love has evolved into an unseen entity that beats steadily through my life, like cardiac tissue. I don’t have to think about whether I activelylove you, any more than I have to plan blinking or taking my next breath. It is as automatic as peristalsis and as enduring as the rocks that surround us in the Port Hills.

5.
Enfolded
    Catherine McNamara
    All along she called him Gerard. It was not his name. When the game ended, she stayed Mariam for a while, but he would slip. She enjoyed calling him Gerard, partly because that game had tickled them both so hard, and now it was a kind of trace. There was another game where she was O and he was M, but that was a sexual game, grinding and full of spluttered words, burrowing and friction. There were no games now. She sat on her suitcase at his local airport, waiting for the driver they would send, because he had fallen from a ladder and lost the use of his legs. He couldn’t piss, he said. Couldn’t drive. Couldn’t have an erection.
    There had been no need to say that. She notes a young man heading her way from the car lot.
    At the house, he is dressed for her, wearing a printed shirt