All the boys she ever loved

Featured in

  • Published 20230801
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-86-3
  • Extent: 196pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

Michael Zanetti 

I remember the first one like I remember them all. This gangly little five-year-old making himself small in the backseat of the car, the middle seat a gap between him and Lacey as they talked on and off the whole drive about whatever it was five-year-olds talked about back then. He’d brought a small cloth bag with him, and he was showing her his action figures, these strong, poorly proportioned men with large heads and reluctant smiles. When we got to the house, I asked him to take off his shoes on the porch and he looked at me worried. 

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Jonathan O’Brien

Jonathan O’Brien is a writer, software developer and housing advocate. He was the recipient of a Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artists Fellowship...

More from this edition

In the fullness of time

Non-fictionOur devices and data are more than extensions of our physical bodies. The so-called ‘human-centric’ approach to designing wearable and carriable devices means that they disrupt traditional divisions between work and leisure, production and consumption. It’s difficult not to feel the incursion of work-logics into leisure times and spaces as normal. Stretched for time, couples, families and friendship groups are starting to organise themselves using tools like Slack, Jira, Trello and Asana – that is, in the same way as workplaces. 

The rise and decline of the shopping mall 

FictionPerhaps it is instructive to consider how archaeologists of the future may conceive malls. How might they seem, these empty labyrinths – like rituals that had to be endured in order to receive goods and services? As great monoliths, colosseums constructed for our entertainment? As places of worship? Or perhaps malls will seem more like pyramids do to us: mysteries to be unravelled when the tracks of global trade and communication have faded...

History in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

Poetry Because they spawn near each otherdiscover one another’s dog-scoutsSparta and Gandhi are contemporariesthe Eurotas river and the Gangesmuddying into the Indian Ocean, barbariantriremes appearing...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.