She smashed when she hit the floor. Not a clean, solid break, fixable with superglue and a steady hand, but a starburst of shards. Rainbows of glaze among ceramic clouds, all spreading from the epicentre as though she had been packed with powerful explosives. It occurred to her that this seemed like overkill. She’d been dropped, that’s all. Nothing she hadn’t handled before: a few chips knocked off, here and there.
But somehow, this time, the fragility she’d always suspected betrayed itself and she came apart completely, knowing that she could never be repaired.
She’d have to become something new.

She’d spent ages getting ready. He’d forgotten their plans. He sighed audibly, she started shouting. He patronized her, she froze him out. He called a taxi, she slammed the door. He gave her the silent treatment, she gave him what for. They smiled at their friends, they snarled at each other. She was flirting with the barman, he was eyeing up the girls on the dancefloor. She gave him a dirty look. He rolled his eyes. She caught them. He grinned. She giggled. He reached for her hand. She kissed his fingers. They finished their drinks. They walked home, moonlit.

If we had loved each other, we might have made it work.
I’d had no wish to marry anyway, but to be given in marriage as a booby-prize, bait-and-switch husband; the gods’ debt paid off in false coins…
It’s a kick in the ego, when you’re a god

She missed her mountains. I’d have left the sea for love, but for a contract kept for duty? Better let the shipyard clamour and stench keep her from my side.
We reap the benefits of our alliance, without being bothered by each other. But when our paths cross, I confess I smile.

Terms set by gods whose heaven is a drinking hall are seldom logical.
They let me see their feet. A parade of corns, calluses, hangnails and fungus. You would have thought divine feet to be flawless. But then, these gods made the world from a corpse: look how that turned out.
One pair was smooth, dry. Soles leathery enough to tell me this was no pampered princeling. The smell, sweet at least in comparison.
I made my choice: Njord: ill-favoured and reticent. They laughed, thinking me cheated, but a god who cares about the seldom-seen can’t make the worst husband.

We never told her, the bright-eyed creature who called us aunt and uncle. It seemed kindest to let her think she belonged, even when her body cringed against us, lungs screaming when our air polluted them. She’d no memories of home but her soul knew this was no place like it.
When the portal reopened, a storm’s eye, rolling madly, we couldn’t stop it taking her.

It was only when she was spat back out: that world too bright for what we’d made of her, that we realised what we had stolen from our too-changed changeling, her eyes weeping rainbows.

The large cat looped around my ankles, an infinity of insistent affection. It nearly knocked me over. I bent to stroke. It backed away, and then sat back on its haunches, rearing up like a meerkat. Stretching its paws out, it pushed on pressure points, forcing me to my hands and knees. I laughed nervously as I saw it tense then leap onto my back. The force of its landing knocked me flat on my face. I felt surprising heaviness as it settled between my shoulders.
We are both waiting. I do not know my fate, but the cat does.

(Hanami is the Japanese custom of viewing flowers, particularly cherry blossoms.)

I looked at the blossom falling from the trees like unconvincing, rather tacky snow. It collected in wilting drifts until the street resembled the aftermath of a wedding where the bridesmaids had something to prove. I could see the mounds decaying into pink-brown sludge, like the vomit of a toddler allowed to eat too much birthday cake. The trees would not be as resplendent again as they had in April. For the rest of the year they’d be unremarkable, like a receptionist whose band once had a hit single, remembered by nobody.
Looking at the blossoms always brings me contentment.

I used to wish it on the world, this ultimate war. I felt that they deserved it. The planet better off a few millennia dead and charred and poisoned than infected by the likes of us.
I wished the bombs would drop, until they did.

And still I’m here, breathing the poisoned air, eating contaminated food. Starving for sunlight. Hiding from the others who survived.
And yet, despite myself, I live and live.

I don’t take credit. None of it was me but wishes can come true, if only by coincidence. Perhaps I should have thought to wish for death.

Not crispy crackling notes but pocket-crumpled: She’d tried to hand them over casually, as if the money didn’t mean that much. As if she really could afford to do this. As if it weren’t significant or scary. Her change was taking quite some time to come. She pushed away the urge to thrust her hand out, demand her due. She knew that change was owing. At least she thought it was. And then doubt struck her. Did she appear ridiculous, demanding? Hadn’t it been enough?
She’d been mistaken. She should’ve known: no matter what she offered, no change would come.

This was inspired by my wife’s work tackling menstrual stigma in schools.

Check out @periodpositive for more.

It’s also about the way social survival takes precedence over personal values in secondary school.

The book was amazing. Feminism sounded great. She’d been absorbed all lunchtime.
Dampness between her legs informed her that the blood from the last half-hour of her period had not. Her skirt now sported a motif – an asymmetrical heart – that matched her maroon blazer; all the feminist theory in the world wasn’t going to prevent the social mortification that loomed.
She pulled off a friendship bracelet and unraveled it.
She borrowed a needle and stitched a scarlet border. If a teacher saw the modification, she’d be in detention, but that was a desirable disgrace.
Sighing, she left the book behind.