Cirrus@Austlit

'My aunt Lyn flies in on the back of a heatwave and lands in the living room of the weatherboard cottage a week after the funeral. My housemates give her a cup of tea, but she likes to drink chai when it's lukewarm, not piping, so she leaves it sitting on top of a box of Scrabble while she waits for me to talk. I look at my thumbs and will them to transform into knives, the kind you use to spread butter onto a piece of warm toast, solid turning to liquid in your hands. I think to myself that it is strange how quickly something can change from state to state; butter to syrup, water to ice, living to dead, brain to fog...' (Introduction)