My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man in a balaclava with a knife to her throat. She is not chirping. She is screaming. The expectation of one thing when the opposite is true. And yet in my memory it is still a chirp, not a scream.
... (read more)
Natasha Sholl

Natasha Sholl is a writer and lapsed lawyer based in Melbourne. Her work has appeared in Australian Book Review, The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, SBS Voices, Kill Your Darlings, and Mamamia. In 2020, she completed the KYD Mentors Program. She was shortlisted for a Varuna Fellowship in 2020 and attended a supported residency in 2022. Her first book, Found, Wanting, was published by Ultimo Press in 2022. Her essay, ‘Hold Your Nerve’, was runner-up in the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize.
I have not told anyone that there is a small child growing in my bedside table drawer. The Ziplock bag containing E’s hair, a mass of tangled brown. A handful of baby teeth.
I had brought E into Emergency with shooting pains down his legs. His gait wobbly. One leg doing a strange kick with each step. A fever. They thought it could be meningitis and performed an MRI. At 2 am they came back to ... (read more)