FANZINE

I can’t be reheated anymore. I have to pick the kids up from school. I’m wearing my fur coat and animal slippers I stole from a front yard in a small town. Every second person I talk to seems to be a chef. I don’t have any plans but I have to pretend I have some. My daughter asked me if I was having fun. I said I’d never had fun in my life. Feeling alienated is only cute if you’re pretty. In the abortion operating theatre they were playing that song that goes “I believe in miracles…where you from…you sexy thing.”

 

 

 

Everyone’s having a closing down sale. The employees aren’t bothering to adjust their personality to the customers anymore. Maybe they never did in the first place. I buy a discounted gift for my husband. I accidentally litter on the way to the house. “I like your skirt,” my husband says. “It’s actually a dress,” I say. He picks at his toenails before touching my clit. He won’t open my gift. He says he’ll open it later. All the lights on in the middle of the day. He wanted to date me because he felt comfortable with me. He felt comfortable with me because he felt better than me. I feel sorry for him because I know he hates my pity.

 

 

 

When he’s fucking me I am thinking about what would be an easy but nutritious lunch option for him. I notice I have four cans of chickpeas next to the bed. He asks me if I have a job yet. When he’s going down on me psoriasis flakes from my thigh fall into his mouth, accidentally. He tells me I can’t be picky about work and that I should get a job at the supermarket. “Or a bookstore, you like books don’t you. Or why don’t you do a PhD?” He drinks from my breasts. I can see his sacral chakra is weak. But mine is even worse. What did you do today? he asks. I tell him I made a dreamcatcher. He says he’s only had two bad dreams in his life.

 

 

 

I named my baby after a vegetable. So I would feel healthy. Everyone thinks I’m a vegetarian even when they have seen me eating meat at their house. I give off a vegetarian aura. I don’t need to buy food but I go to the supermarket for something to do. I only have two friends and I just fell out with one of them. I see the ex-friend at the supermarket. She tells me she is starting a gourmet pretzel company with her daughter. I say “That’s nice, yesterday I parked illegally to go to a Mongolian BBQ buffet.”

 

 

 

I consider my options. None of them seem appealing. I drive to the doctors and pass two people I hate hugging. I eat dry cereal in the waiting room, sit on the wrong side of the seat. I tell the doctor I’m depressed. She says, “But you can’t be depressed, I saw you laughing last week.” She tells me that I should get a job and then I’ll be happy. “Have you thought about starting your own business?” I invent an allergy. I’m ready to love. But I can only do two things a day. My spare time isn’t my spare time. I say I’m leaving the country soon. I need more bridges to burn. Every time someone tries to talk to me I just say I’m leaving the country soon.

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_{Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle is a writer from New Zealand currently living in Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Autobiography of a Marguerite (Hue & Cry Press, 2014). She can be found on Twitter and Instagram: @zarahbm.}