We set up shop on the doorstep of our downstairs neighbour, shed our possessions for handfuls of coins: clothes worn soft, jewellery gifts from ex-boyfriends, drooping pot plants, half-empty bottles of nail polish. I buy her camp cooker; she buys my mood ring. It’s broken, I warn her, has been that way from the start, slip it on my finger to show her the constant dark green of melancholy. She laughs and I join, for how could that be as the two of us sit here, skin bared to a new sun, cash enough for beers that night, and she tells me it’s all a load of shit, that no one believes in it anyways, that she’s so hungry she’d sell her soul for a bag of salt n vinegar crisps, slips the ring from my finger to hers, glow of amber as she walks away.
Rachel Smith lives in Aotearoa New Zealand. She has been published in Landfall, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction & Mslexia Best Women’s Short Fiction 2024. She was screenwriter for Stranded Pearl (2024) and is an editor at Flash Frontier. @rsmithwriternz http://rachelmsmithnz.wix.com/rachel-smith
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