48. A Taste for Tissues
I. Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a genus of native Australian plants ranging from trees to shrubs. The eucalyptus globubus, also known as the blue gum, makes up about half of plantation hardwood grown in Australia. Because of its fast growth and short fibres, it’s commercially grown for its pulpwood which is used in the production of tissues and paper.
In the fourth grade I had a crush on a girl who ate tissues. I used to stare at her from across the room as she nursed a piece of paper between her delicate fingers. She held my focus completely, the noise of the world would fade into the background, fuzzy static pushed to the back of my mind, all my senses save for my sight dulled for the sole purpose of taking her in, imprinting her against the back of my eyes. As she tore a piece from the tissue in her hands, her own eyes were always concentrated on our teacher, intent on learning.
I watched as she brought the torn piece of tissue up to her lips, her pink tongue peeking out to receive the fluttering, snow-white portion before retreating into her mouth. I imagined the tissue piece getting soaked on the flat of her tongue, the fibres quickly dissolving in her saliva only to be pulled back from the edge of disintegration and rolled against the roof of her mouth before being swallowed.
Sometimes, I suppose when the mood struck her, she would roll half a sheet of tissue into a ball and place it in her mouth. Pushing it to the back of her mouth, she would chew it with her molars, the muscles of her jaw tightening every time she did so. How satisfying it must’ve been to bite down and feel the give of the ball of tissue as its fibres compressed tighter and tighter, wringing the ball with the pressure of her jaw.
She never made a big deal about eating tissues. During recess and lunch she was never inclined to indulge in that strange habit of hers. As soon as we were in class though, a sheet of tissue would always find its way into her hands and she would pick at it for the duration of the lesson.
Everybody in our year level thought she was strange and took great efforts to avoid her. I knew if I wanted friends, the smartest choice would be to stay away from her.
But I was enraptured, and that had made me stupid.
Eucalyptus trees draw large volumes of water through transpiration. Described as ‘water-guzzling aliens’, they can drain soil at a terrifying capacity. When introduced outside of their native environment and left unchecked, they can become an invasive species and ruin local ecosystems.
She was an anomaly. The darkest-skinned girl in our year level. At the time, us kids hadn’t yet understood the concept of race. We only knew how to judge someone based on how they looked. And how you looked was most visible by the colour of your skin.
Family members used to always make comments about my skin colour. Every family gathering involved an aunty or an uncle pointing out how dark my skin was – just like my father’s. ‘Bà đen’, they used to call me. I learnt how to swallow their words into myself. The only thing I understood was that she was dark, but so was I.
Eucalyptus trees are known for their high survivability. They have adapted to wildfires and can resprout after fires. Some can be chopped at the root and grow again. This survivability is what makes them extremely useful for commercial farming.
Not even a decade on this earth, she had already been raised with the understanding that she was meant to take the beatings given to her. The other students understood this too. Boys would pull her hair and laugh at her. Girls would exclude her and spread rumours about her. The teachers never did anything; they praised her for her resilience instead.
She never seemed to mind, her impassive demeanour and blank stare only made the other students grow bored of her. On bad days though, they took this as a challenge.
She’d been sitting in the shade eating her lunch when three boys approached her. What began as the typical teasing started getting more and more animated when it became clear that she wasn’t going to respond to their goading.
Louder and louder the boys had shouted in her direction, yet she remained silent.
Then I saw one of them pull back his fist.
You don’t get a choice in whether you endure the abuse; resilience is simply the term used to name your helplessness. It’s supposed to be a compliment but all it does is remind you of how they got you to heel and how they could do it again.
Just because she was built to survive doesn’t mean she should have to endure hardship after hardship to prove that she could. I refused to let them convince her this was the life she deserved.
This was how our friendship started: with my taking a punch to the face that was meant for her. I was never a fighter, but I knew how to take a beating. I curled into myself, covering my head with my arms, as a storm of fists and shoes pounded against my back and legs and shoulders. Their knuckles sent waves upon waves crashing through me, every strike reverberating through my bones.
By the time it ended, I knew I should’ve been crying and sniffling from the hurt all over my body. Maybe I had been, but my concussion wouldn’t let me register it. Either way, when I looked at her and saw her overcome with concern for me, I couldn’t help the swell of pride blooming in my chest before passing out.
The day after, I entered our classroom wearing the bruises on my body as badges of honour. I had been excited to get to school to show them off to her. As soon as I spotted her, I ran to her and raised my arm next to hers to compare.
The deep purple splotch on my skin made it several shades darker, closer to her skin colour. I laughed out loud in delight at the sight and she smiled softly.
We were the same, our arms seemed to say.
II. Paperbark
Melaleuca is a genus of nearly three hundred species of trees, which includes the commonly known paperbark tree.
Sometime during the years since we became friends and our final year of primary school, she’d made the switch from eating tissues to paper. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when she’d made the change, only that it had happened gradually, with her alternating between the two before fully switching over.
When I’d realised, too late, what she’d done, I began to worry. I don’t know what it was about paper that triggered my concern for her. Maybe I had convinced myself that the softness of tissues could be more easily digested. Paper, in comparison, was more solid, with sharper edges and corners that could cut.
She tried reassuring me by saying that it was actually not that different from eating tissues. The reason she had made the switch was that paper was more real, more filling for her.
I wasn’t convinced. I believed that the paper she was eating was giving her paper cuts along the inside of her throat. I thought of her throat and the red, raw lacerations that must’ve accumulated from her consumption of paper, worried about how she would be able to speak with the blood that would well up in her mouth.
The bark of paperbark trees can be peeled off and used to create various tools including water containers, mats, and baskets.
This is what the guide at the botanical gardens told the class when we stopped at one. She rambled on about the other plants surrounding the tree but I had already stopped listening. When the class walked along the trail to continue the tour, I stayed behind to stare at the paperbark tree.
I stepped closer to it, off the worn dirt path and onto the freshly placed soil, which gave way under my shoes. The bark of the tree was bone white, stark against its dark green leaves and the brown soil that nourished it.
The tree was peeling all over and I thought to myself how strange it was that trees always seemed to be shedding. I ran my fingers along the loose bark, tracing its outlines – it was smooth and silky under my touch. This close, the white of the bark looked even more surreal, like the surface of a bone that had burst and was trying to escape from its own marrow.
I curled my fingers behind a piece of bark and pulled. I had barely put any effort into it but it came away easily. The bark was so light in my hands that, had I not been looking straight at it, I wouldn’t have known it was sitting in my palm. I rubbed it between my index and thumb, letting my fingers glide along its velvety surface.
It wasn’t enough. I wanted another piece, a bigger one than the one I held. I reached up and started picking at another. This time I was met with a little resistance as the bark clung onto the trunk. I pulled more firmly and it gave way, revealing light brown bark underneath. I stared at it momentarily, mesmerised by the drastically different colour.
I was about to reach out and feel it when the teacher called out to me, telling me to catch up with the others. Quickly, I stuffed the pieces of bark into my pockets and rejoined the class.
Its flowers produce an amber honey that has a strong flavour and easily candies. The honey is not considered to be high quality but is nevertheless popular.
I placed the stolen bark into her palm; a gift from our separate excursion trips. She stared at it in her hand for a long moment. In that space of time, I thought I’d offended her. Perhaps the by-product of my destruction was not a good gift. Perhaps she was affronted, horrified even, at what I’d done.
Instead, she reached out to me, like I had towards that paperbark in the gardens, and softly tapped against my bottom lip in permission. I granted it and opened my mouth.
She threaded her fingers in, her pinky caressing the side of my cheek. My throat seized up at her entrance, unaccustomed to the intrusion. Her fingers reached the back of my mouth, brushing along my molars. Her palm covered my chin, dragging the bottom of my jaw down, preventing me from closing my mouth.
Instinctively, I seized her wrist with both my hands, gasping and choking in surprise, but she remained steadfast. My heart was beating in my chest, my pulse pumping loudly in my ears. I knew she wasn’t going to relent so I tried taking deep breaths through my nose instead.
When I calmed down enough, I slowly met her eyes. She had been staring at me the whole time, her eyes owlish. Her taste on my tongue was noxiously sweet. I couldn’t help it. I let out several huffs of air in some sort of bizarre laugh – the only kind I could manage with her fingers in my mouth – thinking that even hard candy could melt at the right temperature.
She didn’t laugh with me. That unnerved me a bit. I had hoped my laughter would lighten the mood. However, with her fingers still pressed against my tongue, I could feel the stuttering of her pulse, which threatened to shatter the illusion at any moment’s notice. I think we both recognised in that moment that we were at an impasse and neither of us knew what that meant and how we were supposed to cross it.
We had already known for some time that the following year we’d be going our separate ways to different high schools. Suddenly, for no reason that I could comprehend, I felt a rush of a grief that had yet to come mingle with the not-yet yearning I’d come to know soon. I hadn’t wanted to lose her. She seemed to sense this too.
The bark of the paperbark lay on the ground between us, forgotten.
She opened her mouth then and, in that far away voice of hers, said, “What you put in your mouth will never be you.”
I hadn’t understood what she meant by that.
III. Acacia
Acacia is a genus of over a thousand species of shrubs and trees. The acacia pycnantha, also known as the golden wattle, is Australia’s national floral emblem.
I was a stubborn child, and I’d only grown into an even more stubborn teenager. When we entered high school, I hadn’t reached out to her. I had wanted her to reach out to me first, to prove to myself that she needed me as much as I needed her.
It wasn’t until I received an urgent call from her mum that I felt my world spin. The commute to the hospital had been the longest stretch of time in my life. Worse and worse scenarios crashed over and into each other in my muddled mind. Unable to push them away, I worried myself down to the bone, my grip on my phone death-like.
By the time I arrived, I could hear her through the hospital walls, screaming and begging them not to do it. I could barely make out her words through her sobbing but I thought I heard her telling them that she didn’t want it to leave her and asking them to let her keep it inside her.
I forced myself to wait for her.
Extracts from the bark and leaves of wattle trees can be used for medicinal purposes such as relieving toothache or colds. They can also be applied to wounds and burns.
When I came to her, she was sitting on a stone bench on the outskirts of the garden behind the hospital, hidden by the yellow bloom of an acacia tree. She had folded into herself, hugging her knees to her chest, her neck craning towards the night sky. The moon bathed her in its light and made her look blue.
I sat down beside her, our shoulders brushing. I didn’t greet her, I just asked her why she had done it.
She didn’t look at me; she continued staring at the stars above us. The chirp of the crickets filled the silence as I waited. When she finally spoke, her words came out as a whisper, the breeze carrying them away. I had to lean in closer to catch them.
She told me that it made her cleaner. It didn’t work, she admitted. If anything, it just hurt her more.
Making paper involves a series of processes that transforms logs of wood into pulp and then into sheets. During production, the pulp is bleached to achieve the whiteness that office copy paper is known for. Chemicals used for bleaching include various compounds containing chlorine or oxygen. The process releases chlorinated compounds into bodies of water, harming not only aquatic life but also human life.
She knew that her reason didn’t make sense to other people and that everybody thought she was crazy. She didn’t care.
Consumption is not an act of union, but rather an act of demarcation. The boundaries of what marks me from you, you from me, become most apparent in its undertaking. Because consumption, at its core, is about power – who eats, who is eaten, who chooses whom or what is eaten. It’s assumed that the one who is eating holds the power, but that is not always the case.
What you put in your mouth will never be you, she had said. Referring to that common adage, you are what you eat, except you aren’t and never will be. Filling herself with whiteness hadn’t worked; she would always be herself.
I said nothing to reassure her.
Instead I reached towards a couple of acacia flowers beside her ear and held it in my hands. The flowers of the golden wattle are delicate things. They were lighter than air and feather-like to the touch. I crushed them and bright yellow pollen burst from my fingers, floating along the cool air of the night.
I rolled the fine grains of pollen between my fingers, feeling them traverse the dips and rises of my fingerprints. Then I swiped the traces of the flowers on her cheek, the golden dust glittering like a constellation against her moonlit skin. She laughed, surprised, and grasped some flowers from the tree to wipe on my hair in retaliation, the yellow standing out amongst my dark strands.
We were the same, the moment seemed to say. No, I thought, we weren’t. But that was what made it wonderful.
I picked a couple more flowers from the tree and held them in my palm, cupping her cheek with my other hand. My heart rabbiting in my chest, I looked at her meaningfully before pressing softly on her bottom lip with my thumb in permission. She raised her eyebrow but relented, opening her mouth. I gently placed the flowers on her tongue, and she giggled.
Holding her face in my hands, I brought her closer. I could feel the heat of her body against mine, her breath ghosting over my lips.
I let her meet me halfway, the flowers on her tongue spreading a warm, tangy sweetness onto mine, blossoming between our lips.
Cindy Tran (she/her) is a writer living, working and studying on unceded Kaurna land. She is currently undertaking postgraduate research at Adelaide University studying diasporic Vietnamese literature. Her recent works were published in the 2025 MIKI Prize Anthology and Woven Webs magazine. Her contact information can be found here.