The Lottery

After suffering years of crippling gambling addiction, I finally won the lottery. The cashier had handed me too much change, and I used the extra money to buy what turned out to be the winning ticket. The prize money got me my husband and our two perfect children, but whenever I looked deep into their eyes all I could see were various stone fruits. These fruits signified my dishonesty. The beauty of men, the solemnity of rainshafts, the firmness of literature— all those things made life seem alive to me. Soon after, however, they became pain behaviours; coping mechanisms. It struck me that although we think of the future as indeterminate and changeable, it’s really the past that’s capacious enough to embody those qualities. Often I would go to coffee with Sally and hear gossip about our friends that changed them irrevocably in my mind. One had invested in a chain of three-star hotels; another had inadvertently revealed his sexual maturity to be an abyssal immaturity, an overcompensation into which I could project all my cruel thoughts about him. Sally shrugged. This is what growing up is like, she said. My life has since continued to devolve into a succession of windowless rooms, and at the door of each a guest is greeted and enters. All day I hear their comings and goings. I hear the lies they’re saying about me.

Jackson McCarthy is a poet and student from Auckland currently studying in Wellington. He was a finalist for the Schools Poetry Award 2021. His work has been published in Starling, Landfall, Bad Apple, and elsewhere.