Fifty People in a Postage Stamp

A weekend offering: Of spoon lickers, a rubber duck, & a voice shaped by riverbed.

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Some say fifty isn’t a big number.
Not in this digital world—where people sneeze & go viral, the algorithm crowns a one-liner king, & the writers with mud under their nails & poems in their teeth wait in the wings, sipping lukewarm tea & questioning their life choices.

But let me tell you: fifty feels enormous when you write with your chest cracked open.

Fifty people reading these words? That’s a crowd. That’s a community. A chorus of page whisperers, spoon lickers, & perfectly folded throws.

That’s almost too many for my home—which, for the record, is part postage stamp, part sanctuary, part treehouse in the sky. Still, you could just about fit.

Let’s pretend you’re all coming over.

You’d arrive past the lilly pillies, tall & intrusive in the best way, brushing the windows like gossipy aunties, full of birdsong & buzzing pollinators. The terrace would catch the early ones—those who linger with their backs to the railing, stoneware in hand, letting the breeze tuck in beside them. Someone would lean too far, chasing the trees with their gaze—maybe catching a little vertigo from the height. Another would quietly rearrange my pots. I’d pretend not to notice. Someone would bring cake—& likely a story too, folded into the tin like parchment. Someone always does.

The living room is small but full of light. You’d talk in threes, maybe quartets. Settle instinctively where the sun lands. One of you would pull your feet up on the black leather sofa—a Wegner, but worn-in like a favourite coat—& I’d be quietly glad you felt at home enough to do so.

A few would find themselves in the library/studio—half-chaos, half-nest—& run their fingers along the spines without needing to be told not to. The kind of people who enter a room of books with reverence. Fiction lined with bookmarks; essays, annotated; poetry slipped between philosophy. One or several titles might make you bristle—or beam. You might stumble upon The Hearing Trumpet & wonder if someone laced the tea. Or The Summer Book, which sounds innocent until you realise it isn’t.

Seven would vanish into the ensuite to marvel at the shower with no door—because, frankly, who does that? (Me. I do.) It smells like geranium leaf & absolution, so naturally you’d loiter like repentant sinners in a steam-soaked chapel. A few would fall for the little Japanese plunge bath & her faithful rubber duck in the second bathroom. If you cried in it, I wouldn’t blame you.

One of the early adopters would be snooping in there too, cracking open cupboards they assumed were off-limits. They’d find shelves lined with more Aesop than anyone should confess to owning—because, as mentioned in Leave the Water by the Bed, the woman I live with doesn’t stock a spare, she stocks for the next lifetime. But this is Melbourne, & Dennis once cut my best friend’s hair, back before the brand ever went global, or he could have ever imagined. So yes—it’s history too, not just scent.

Even the pocket-sized laundry would make room for someone—the introvert, perhaps—curled up by the detergent, grateful for the rhythmic hush of the washer to do all the talking. Just mind the dryer. It’s dramatic & hums existential questions between cycles.

Fifty is a lot in this space. But the right kind of a lot. A cashmere-socks-in-winter kind. A warm-bread-with-butter kind. A you-didn’t-know-you-needed-it-until-it-arrived kind.

And that’s what Substack has been to me.
A room that formed behind me, word by word, while I thought I was just passing through. I wrote like I was slipping notes under a door—not knowing if anyone was on the other side, just hoping the hallway would answer back.
I arrived with no blueprint—just a blur, a kettle, a DM from the luminous

Kemi Nekvapil

& an inbox that maybe blinked back. No funnel, no tidy five-step arc from grief to gold. Just words. Some tender, some scrappy, all a little unruly—like they’d slipped out the back door when no one was looking.

And then—tap. Someone did.
Fifty of you, to be precise.

This place isn’t glamorous. The algorithm still prefers hot takes with headline swagger. A single post moaning “zero subscribers” will somehow rack up ten thousand likes—mostly from people who swear they’re above caring, while furiously refreshing their stats.

But I do. I care deeply about this.
This strange, slow, unoptimised practice of building a room with your sentences & hoping someone walks in without being told to take their shoes off. The best ones never do. They arrive barefoot or with something warm in their hands. They look around like it’s familiar. Like maybe they’ve been here before—in a dream, or a sentence. They leave something behind—a note, a breath, an exhale—& the room reshapes to hold it.

That’s what we’re doing here. Not chasing numbers. Not building brands. Just laying down language like rugs, hoping someone stays long enough to feel the softness underfoot.

I’ve read pieces here that made me forget what time it was. I’ve laughed at other people’s family disasters (they were written in humour—I’m not a total sociopath), cried over the deaths of dogs I never met, nodded so hard at a sentence I worried I might pull something.
Substack isn’t the loudest place. But it’s the one where I can say soul without cringing. Where I can end a paragraph with an ampersand & no one asks me to explain myself.

We write differently here. We confess softly. Fold meaning into ellipses. Mourn & celebrate in the same breath. We are, in many ways, a houseful of ghosts—gentle ones—who pass through your writing & leave the lights on behind them. It’s the one place I can use an em dash the way Didion or Dillard might—& not get an email asking, ‘What’s this little minus sign?’ like I invented punctuation on my lunch break.

There are days I wonder if it matters. If I’m just scribbling onto a napkin & posting it into the void. But then I remember who I’m writing this for.
Me. Truly.
And then—
A reply.
Heartfelt.
Or someone highlights a line I almost deleted. Or sends a message that feels like a hug for the heart.
And I remember: this is not about building an audience.
It’s about building a room you all can live inside.

Fifty people making space in their already-full minds to read what I’ve written.
Fifty people—enough to fill my apartment & still leave someone balancing on the windowsill.

One of you would find the library chair—the one Ray & Charles designed—& lower yourself into it with the kind of ease that suggests you’d known it in a past life. Another would offer to make tea—or coffee—or whatever we all pretended was for the caffeine, not the comfort. The poets would gather on the terrace, catching metaphors like moths. The journal-keepers would huddle over the kitchen table, swapping pens & unspoken things. Someone would ask to take a bath. Someone else would ask if I had oat milk. I’d say no—but I have biscuits.

Someone would drape a scarf over the kitchen stool like they’d done it a hundred times before. Someone else would stay a little longer than they meant to. One of you would light a candle without asking—because it’s what I always do. My bed would hold one of you for a while—the kind of nap that isn’t planned, just happens, because the body finally feels safe.
Another might flip through the vinyl & choose something—Patti Griffin, maybe. Or Tom Waits. Or The Velvet Underground, if the evening turned louche & someone had red wine in their teeth. Or Archie Roach, if the night called for something quieter. Heavier. Truer. (And if you don’t know who he is, that’s alright—just imagine a voice shaped by smoke & riverbed, by sorrow held long enough to become lullaby. I insist you make his acquaintance.)

That’s what this feels like. A gathering that arrived before the invitation.
A home that built itself around the words.
A sacred, slightly cramped little sanctuary where I can say: I didn’t know it was also for you until you stepped inside.

Substack, you strange & stubborn refuge—thank you.
For letting me whisper instead of pitch.
For holding these fifty names with me like candles in a dark room.
I don’t take this lightly. In a world of blinking lights & shrinking attention, being read with care feels miraculous.
This kind of attention is not a given.
It is a gift. A form of presence.
A kind of love.
It’s fifty people in a postage stamp.

So I’ll keep writing.
As the numbers rise & fall—as they inevitably may—I’ll keep posting unsent letters to the sky, trusting someone down the line knows how to read the wind.
I’ll keep opening the door, leaving the kettle on, letting the air move through the hallway of this home I didn’t know I’d built.

You're welcome to stay as long as you like.
No need to knock.
This place already remembers you.

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If we were sitting together over tea, I’d probably ask: Well, you’re already here…then I’d probably just smile, tuck my feet beneath me & say: And since you’re already here, tell me—just a little, or a lot—about you.

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