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Lindsay Johnstone's avatar

"See, in the end it’ll be like we were never even here," he says. It’s not the first time we’ve had this conversation or versions of this conversation, but what I can say is we have far more of them these days.

With a blunt bone-handled knife, I cleave messy shards of butter from the hard, cold pat. Wonder how just an hour in the fridge can do this. In the milky morning light I’d found it, forgotten from last night, so soft and yielding on the countertop, a thin oil slick oozing along a seam in the foil. Cursed myself as though buttercare is my job. Cradled it in my palm like a baby as I put it away. Licked my fingers clean then dried them, ineffectively, on my bare thighs.

"Entire South American civilisations," he tells me, reading aloud from the book I’m yet to read – "whole ancient civilisations!" – uncovered by archaeologists who’d been told they were just stories. "It’s all stories anyway. Morals. Rules. We’ve made them all up."

I make the right noises from the other side of the kitchen.

"We’re just a speck," he’s saying, but what I hear is we might as well enjoy it, then.

It’s not my way to eat carbs first thing. I press the clumps down on the flat side of the rough oatcake and eat it quickly, at the island unit, off the cellophane. At times in my life, I’ve denied myself pleasure. Sensation. I’ve cut it off. Shut it down. Told it to stop.

"I still can’t get over that," I say, "not knowing how it will all turn out." I know how it sounds. What could I mean by “it all”? He tells me that the sun will collapse in on itself, creating a black hole that will instantaneously suck in everything in its orbit. That’s how it ends. I don’t know if I meant that, exactly.

A hand under my chin, I sprinkle caught crumbs back onto the gluey top. Turn the oatcake over for the butter to grab at the ones my hand missed. It reminds me of last night’s toothpaste when - distracted – it dripped out of my mouth and down my chin, though it’s not the same at all.

"Well, in that case," I say.

Beside me, my phone vibrates.

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Kate Anderson's avatar

Not sure what this is but here goes...

The Overshare.

(A Gap Fill.)

Task instructions:

- You must fill each gap using 3 words or less.

- You may use a dictionary to check any words that are difficult to spell.

- You must not use AI to help you to complete this task.

- Extra points will be given for answers that are unexpected, amusing or creative.

- You should allow no more than 40 minutes for this task.

This week I kept returning to 'The Argonauts' by Maggie Nelson. In it, on a page that I have marked with red pen, she describes being drawn to bad ideas in her writing and she wonders about whether the ideas feel ‘bad’ because they have merit. It is an unexpected contrast of things that I find ______________. I wonder a lot about the ‘badness’ of my own ideas, both in my____________ and my ______________.

There was that day, for example, in the park after the summer holidays when I kept telling all the school mums about ________________________. I managed not to cry as spoke, but I could tell that some of them felt _____________________ anyway. My husband pulled me to one side and asked quietly whether or not I might regret having said too much.

Another day, another thing divulged; it had not been my intention to tell Laura about the __________________ over coffee but, I reasoned, she had always been so kind and was such a good listener. I was lighter after the confession, and did not stop to think how she ____________________.

And then there was the time outside the school gates when I told ________________ about old diaries I had found that described some sordid _____________________ in graphic detail. I knew that he was __________________ and that to share such information was akin to dangling a ___________________ in front of a ___________________, but I couldn’t seem to help myself…

The stories too, (both fictional and non) have become vehicles for this growing urge to divulge and be damned. At a writing group I shared a piece that blended fact and fiction, the toxic mess of __________________, an account of a fight during which he’d called me a ________________ and thrown _________________. I was not hurt, but humiliated. I shared my work, baring my soul to a room full of strangers, the intimate details of my past now fodder for critical evaluation, Easter eggs buried in so many lines of prose.

Is it a need for catharsis that ___________________? An attempt to divest myself of ____________? Or is it nothing more than a way to deal with all the gaps I am seeking desperately ________________?

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