Origin stories

Mapping the shape of a family

Featured in

Buy $18.50 – 27.99
  • Published 20240507
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-95-5
  • Extent: 203pp
  • Paperback, ePub, PDF, Kindle compatible

IN THE EARLY hours of the morning, the boy turns to his mother. ‘Do you want me to tell you a story, Mum?’

She stretches, opens her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she says. She looks at him, lying on his back, bathed in the buttery light of dawn. She tries to stay awake so that she will remember. Later she will check the time on her phone and see that he woke her before six.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

Tweet
Share
Share
Pin
0 Shares

Subscribe to great writing

Access starts at just $6 per month. Print and digital options to suit every budget!

Learn more

About the author

Brooke Maddison

Brooke Maddison is a writer and editor working on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land in Brisbane. Her writing has been published in Kill Your...

More from this edition

Exemplary 

Poetry The superego’s unvarying verdict: you have failed, you deserve it, get over it!  Stay in your own psychotic micro-enclave,  opining about enactment and re-enactment. Now and again there’s...

Survey

FictionBut I have long lost my personal thread to this place, I realise, and thinking of this loss I almost feel mournful for a former life I see now as though in the third person, a life belonging to an altogether different man. Perhaps it is for the best that those old threads are cut, for it means I am free of them.

For my ex (an unforgiving poem)

Poetry Trust me when I wished you an eventful summer by which I meant processing yourself like a tardy  Microsoft update You will have my blessing. Trust me  about...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.