Free Australian Love Stories by Cate Kennedy

from the sound of her footsteps, a sound where comfort and sleepy petulance somehow mixed. I got up and went to the sink.
    From outside she asked, in neutral tones, ‘Do you want coffee?’
    My body, and its weightless, tiring passenger, were not presently able to answer. My hands in the sink, palms up, looked to me like the accused. After a while of staring at them I turned to the mirror. There was no bow tie; just my puffy, tired, drunken face, and behind it, showing through the eyes, a sense this wasn’t who was meant to be staring back from the glass. I wasn’t speaking to her when I said:
    â€˜Who— are —you?’
    And she did this thing. She leant against the door and scratched it, once, twice, like a little cat that wants to get in. On my side, I leant my head against it; she put her lips to the keyhole and said, in a voice like quiet music:
    â€˜You know— exactly— who I am.’

    O God, Eternity, Womanhead; put out your hand to me, teach me what I want; steal me back and give me to myself again; come to me in your daytime, in a dream that one of us is having, come to me when you will, on high, on low, on a rosy road aheadof me, rising and falling before me, made of what other men have crushed and thrown down here before me; O Girl, in your woman’s body, lead me on. Lead me on. Lead me on.

ADRIFT IN SHARDS AND SPLATTERED FRUIT

Gen Y Love
    DANIELLE MCGEE

    In 2006, Sydney had its hottest New Years Day on record: forty-five degrees. There were bushfires and power outages. Or so we were told, an aeroplane ride away in the lonely west. Courtesy of the Channel 9 news team, we had also heard that NASA launched its first mission to Pluto.
    I was seventeen. It all seemed very far removed from Fremantle, and from my Leavers plans in Dunsborough, to be honest. April 27 saw construction begin on the Freedom Tower of the new World Trade Centre in New York City: this had a bit more relevance.
    During my first year of high school, I could remember being shaken awake one morning in September and dragged through to the television by my gobsmacked mother to watch a loop of footage showing planes crashing into buildings.
    I went to school that morning with shaky hands and an empty stomach. My first class was history. Our teacher sat us down and told us about ‘terrorism’. I had never heard that term before. The sea of thirty pale faces staring back must have made Mrs Mac realise she’d overdone it on the gory details.
    â€˜Wh…what if they bomb us too?’ one boy whispered. ‘Australia is an ally of the United States.’
    Mrs Mac snorted with impatience. ‘Oh yeah. And what are they going to bomb in Perth—the Bell Tower?’
    Miri was completely oblivious to my existence.
    Is There an Equivalent Word for ‘Freshman’ in Australia?
    Today was a big day for me. Waiting in the scorching heat to enrol for university. I began biting at my nails, like I always did when I got nervous.
    â€˜No offense mate, but there’s no way she’d go out with you,’ Ryan said.
    She wasn’t the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Not even close. ‘How do you know?’ I whispered, even though she was standing a good ten metres away.
    He rolled his eyes. ‘Because, idiot. The obvious.’
    I looked sheepishly at my peeling two-dollar flip-flops from Big W.
    â€˜Come on!’ he waved a sunburnt hand impatiently toward a ring of crisp white tents, baking under the heat, ‘I wanna go check out the rugby club, see if they’re having tryouts for first years…’
    I followed Ryan across the springy grass, masterfully dodging a boy from the Christian Students’ Union.
    â€˜Will you accept Jesus Christ as your saviour today?’ he yelled, as I stopped to yank off the thongs. They were giving me a blister, right next to the big toe.
    Mirabellla De Luca , I allowed myself a small smile, that I hoped only my sandy,