“He’s sitting casually at my kitchen table peeling the skin off an applewith a pocket knife, a red apple that he has quite obviously appropriated from my fruit bowl, might I add.”

“Sitting at the table with the kids, and being told off like a kid, has liberated me; my disenfranchisement has empowered me.”

“Peeling off my skin / leaving just my eyes behind / You see inside my head / Still know that you are mine.”

“For the first time since he showed up in my checkout lane, I let my eyes wander the full length of his body. The bulge in his running down the side of his pants leg is quite noticeable; either he has a banana in his pocket, or he’s happy to see me. Then I notice a similar bulge running down the side of his other pants leg. Either he has two bananas in his pockets, or he has two erections.”

“In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools.”

“Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.”