Boy Swallows Universe

by Trent Dalton

true love is hard. Real romance has death in it. It has midnight shakes and flecks of shit across a bedsheet. True love like this dies if it has to wait for fate. True love like this asks lovers to cast aside what is meant to be and work with what is.

There was pain in it, there was blood and screams and fists against fibro walls, because the worst thing Lyle ever did was get my mum on drugs.

Everybody wants to measure the adult men in my life by goodness. I measure them in details. In memories. In the times they said my name.

true character surely is best shown in hell, that true goodness must surely be best displayed in an underworld where the very opposite is the norm, when evil is living and goodness is an indulgence, you know what I’m saying?’

Do your time, he wrote, before it does you. Your friend always, Slim.

‘Mum, crazy fuckin’ coward abusers don’t change their crazy fuckin’ coward spots.’