A brief description of an ambiguously aged woman who liked to stand in the sun

She stood surveying summer with one hand on her hip and some shadows in her sockets; a full, semi-exposed bust seeping out of a plain black bikini. The fag drooped out of a downward mouth corner (left and down, down low and left) like a strip of plastic cheese. It melted onto her face. She had a leathery stomach; darkened flaps hung over broken down muscle, a wrinkled cocoon for the organ of her post-mastication.

She was the kind of woman who filed skin cancers like toenails. She went to the tired local beautician each week with the newest incarnation of a sticky magazine subscription. And she lay there, thick and naked, whilst some pale thing rubbed oils heavily over her skin, she lay and willed cheap, violent pulsations into the rhythms of their oddly agamous neutrality. She had seen ten thousand furnaces of sun (bright sun, always bright); felt it heavily encase her, the porcelain layers of youth stripped off.

It was nice today, in her kaftan with a moistened fag. It was nice in the sun.

This little mumma appears in the current issue of conconversation, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music publication.