New Zealand Listener

Frog

On the back deck they are talking, my mother and her mother, about the best year that they ever had. My mother’s was the time she worked on Mars in a colony, recovering and recording forgotten events; my grandmother enjoyed her twelve months swimming out each day from a pod that rested deep on the seabed.

“I wonder what his best year will be.” Gran pats my mother’s puku. Bright sun and the shape of her hand flickering against hot light, red veins in the

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