Why I keep a note that says nothing but matters everythingThere is a note in my phone that contains almost nothing. No neatly formed paragraph, no brilliant opening line, no list of things to remember. It is only a…The Dress I Wore to a Party Where I Met Myself AgainThe dress was the colour of late afternoon: a soft, unsettled blue that changed under different lights. In my bedroom mirror, it looked almost silver. On the…Why Gardens Keep Finding Their Way Into My WritingI write about gardens when I’m stuck indoors because a garden gives the imagination somewhere to go. Even when I am surrounded by four walls, a pot of basil on…The hat I wore when I didn’t want to be recognisedThere are clothes we choose for warmth, weather or habit, and then there are clothes that perform a quiet kind of escape. A hat can become a curtain drawn…How to Turn a Breakup Into Vivid VignettesA breakup rarely arrives as one clean story. It comes in fragments: a coffee cup left beside the sink, a song skipped in the car, the quiet shock of seeing…What a cracked mirror taught me about rewritesThe mirror was already damaged when I found it at a weekend market in Melbourne. A thin silver fracture ran from the top corner to the middle, branching into…The art of writing a character who leaves before you’re readySome characters arrive in a story with the force of weather. They change the temperature of every scene, make ordinary details feel charged, and persuade the…Why I keep a playlist of songs I can’t listen to anymoreThere is a playlist on my phone that I rarely open. Its cover is an unremarkable photograph of a pale sky, and its title means nothing to anyone else. Inside…The Sandals That Carried Me Through A Summer Of GoodbyesBy the time summer arrived, I had become skilled at leaving quietly. I could fold a farewell into the last sip of coffee, the final load of washing, the spare…What A Lipstick Stain On A Coffee Cup RevealsA lipstick mark on a coffee cup can look like an accident, a flirtation, or a tiny piece of evidence. Left behind on a café table, it carries the colour of a…