Thistle

Thistle’s father has been dead for twenty years. He passed away when Thistle was thirteen, and at the time she didn’t really know what death meant. Now, at thirty-three, grief hits her hard. And the world is slowly turning against her. Her furniture has begun to speak, and she suspects her neighbours are up to something. A gang of weasels has taken residence in her home. Thistle desperately wants to return to easier times, when the world was still kind and her body was innocent. Armed with a hard drive full of childhood photos, Thistle attempts to bring her old self back to life – online, where strangers love teenage girls.​

Thistle is a young woman whose father, a pilot, dies suddenly in a plane crash when she is thirteen years old. The airline’s compensation payout is substantial but doesn’t assuage the family’s grief. By the time she is seventeen, Thistle has lost most of her teenage years trying to make sense of her father’s premature death. In the meantime, her body is developing, and she finds herself sexualized and objectified by men against her will. Teenaged Thistle is increasingly aware of her allure but unsure of how to use that to her advantage. When her mother gifts her a camera, Thistle decides to turn the lens on herself, capturing her nude body in various poses just before she turns eighteen.