1989 by Gillian O'Shaughnessy
We get our stories straight. Cluster outside clubs with fake ids. Shiver. Throw our handbags in the centre of our circle. Dance. Take drinks from strangers, toss our hair. Stagger. Put out our hands to steady our steps, we vomit green ginger wine and beer. Duck into cars or the shadow of doorways in yellow-lit, rain-splashed high streets. Go home with men who don’t want to be our boyfriends. Find our underwear in the dark, steal change from jars to get the bus home, take off our shoes, tiptoe up hallways. Listen out for our mothers. Get our stories straight.
Gillian O'Shaughnessy is a flash fiction writer from Western Australia. She has won the Reflex Press Flash Fiction Prize and has work published in Smokelong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review and Night Parrot Press anthologies, among others.