Wynnum, Queensland, 2025

 Trinity and I grew up together in a sunburnt town on the dry country of rural Queensland, our homes only a few minutes’ walk apart. She was part of my every day – moving through the house like another sibling, her radiance constant, as if belonging to the light itself. Her voice bounced about the hallways, carried across the yellowed backyard – always bright and assured, and often folding easily into whatever melody she carried in her heart. Trinity loved music deeply, and we would dance together for hours, draped in whatever beautiful fabrics we found in the dress-up box Mum kept for us to play with.

I loved having Trinity around, a best friend just a block away, and when I look back over my childhood years, no memory of her stands alone. She was always there, woven into the quiet rhythm of the family routine – her smile threaded throughout our photo albums. I remember thinking she always held a particularly inexplicable charm as the only cousin with beautiful, wavy, auburn hair. Trinity reminded me of autumn, of dust-pink roses in their bloom, and I deeply regretted, in my adult years, that I did not see her more.

We lost contact with Trinity when I was about twelve years old, after a stretch of family discord I didn’t understand led her to live with her mother. Around that time, my dad took a job on the Fraser Coast, and we packed up the red-brick rental around the corner from Trinity’s father’s house, moved in one big trip, and left behind the browned bushlands for a town beside jewel seas. I never quite settled into the new school, missing the companionship that the country town and Trinity had so easily given. After so much time together, the friendships I formed felt pale and thin by comparison. Perhaps it was because the personalities were simply not as bold as Trinity had been, or perhaps it was because they could never offer what family always had.

My sister eventually found Trinity’s contact, and we briefly reconnected when I was in my later high school years. Trinity and I talked superficially by text from time to time, though it always felt like something had been stolen from our relationship – the years I’d spent not knowing the girl she’d grown into never quite gave way.

After graduation, Trinity and I both moved from our respective family homes – she to the southern coast, and me to a small share house in the heart of Brisbane city. One June, my sister and I caught a train to visit her. We were nervous about what she might be like now that we were grown.

She picked us up from the station in a zippy white car, wearing a slight winged eyeliner and pink hibiscus earrings. It was as if no time had passed at all – all my worry dissolved as though a dream. At Trinity’s house, her room was carefully colour-themed, the walls lined with printouts of Lana Del Rey album covers. I remember being amazed at how put together she seemed – how everything had its place, how her voice had settled low and sure, as if she might now sing jazz.

 
I received the call at about nine o’clock on a Saturday morning – my mother’s voice shaky over the static phone. She merged a four-way call with my two other siblings, took a wavering breath and delivered the terrible news. Trinity has died was all Mum managed to say at first, and whatever followed was lost to me. I simply remember tensing, the news hitting me like a shock wave. I stared at the ceiling fan circling around its axis – its humming filling the silence as Mum cried softly into the receiver, and I lay in the queen-sized bed like a wooden doll with nothing of value to say.

I found out the details of Trinity’s passing a few days after her death. I thought I was going to be sick, having suspected it was a suicide from the moment Mum had called. My body shook, mind swirling – unable to reconcile the girl I knew with the thought that she could no longer see a place for herself in this world.

Trinity’s funeral was held a week or so later. We were not invited on account of a continued feud involving her father over a decade earlier. My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach – I had barely been able to sleep knowing the details of her death, and the lost chance to say goodbye tore through the last reserve of hope I hadn’t known I’d held. I took the morning off from work and livestreamed her funeral in my kitchen. Her family was divided across the aisle – her father’s side in black, and her mother, brothers and friends all dressed in her favourite colour, pink.

Trinity’s best friend delivered a crushing eulogy, and it comforted me to know she’d at least spent her beachside years with a friend as beautiful as Mena. In her speech, Mena likened Trinity to an unstoppable rolling storm, and Lana Del Ray’s ‘Thunder’ played over the funeral home’s speakers as her cotton candy coffin was carried away and buried. I had never heard that song before. Now, I sing it when I’m alone, and it entirely belongs to her.

 

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Isabella Jensen (she/her) is a Brisbane-based writer studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Creative Writing) and Law at QUT. While new to publishing her own work, she has experience in the editorial development of middle-grade and genre fiction manuscripts and is acknowledged in the dedication of Egg In Your Pants by Jay Bird. Her writing is rooted in a rich intergenerational tradition of storytelling and shaped by an ongoing engagement with the perception, and how individuals reinterpret their realities. She is particularly drawn to lyrical, introspective prose. Outside of writing, Isabella enjoys early mornings, singing, and cooking for her loved ones. She can be found at @issy__jensen on Instagram.