She Was.

The corridor branches off thick plush green carpet to my left, thick plush red carpet to my right. Doors are so heavy I have to push my body into them, slide through. Heels echo on the black and white tiles, I don’t know how I came to be here. Briefing papers tucked under my arm, handbag, phone in my hand. I wait outside her office for almost an hour, this is the learning, my heart thumps, it’s been less than a year. The bar, the corridor and I’m swimming. She makes me tea and we talk about growing up without. When I laugh it’s genuine and I breath. She covers my hand with hers and winks. There are three women in the room. I am one of them. Five men. When women make small talk before important things it’s of diets. When women sit in big rooms with bigger tables and yellowed with age posters about the rules of snooker on the walls women’s faces are blank closed. Brown eyes and green eyes and grey eyes meet over glasses and papers and coffee cups and they do not sparkle. Sometimes an eyebrow raises. We are all shutters and drapes. When men sit in big rooms with even bigger tables and yellowed with age posters about the rules of snooker on the walls, men sit with legs open, they twirl a thumb around a wedding band, their faces are far as the eye can see open grassy plains. Sometimes men scratch an itch high up on their thighs, read the paper and play with their ipads. They always eat all the scones with all the jam and all the cream. Some of them have creases on their necks. In the hidey spot below their ears. Grey brown curls lick there. White shirts sit loose between buttons, the smallest gape, and eyes see brown tanned skin – that line of hair  – while tongues flick quickly over dry lips and pens stop writing and the creases are loved (again) by eyelashes looking. Men gesticulate with not boy light brown hands and white perfect nails make exclamation points. On the street, waiting for food, the woman’s eyes meet mine and she reminds me of someone I knew a universe ago. Her eyes are brown and round and heavily lashed and perfect. I think it would be odd to hug her so I smile and she smiles and we are not women in big rooms with bigger desks. My mother understands before I do and when her words come my thumping heart finally slows and I think about ways of knowing and love. Rich with it. (This is a note.) His eyes are the greenest I’ve ever seen when he asks me if I’m a rich girl and I say oh fuck no and he tells me about years spent as a prison guard and I raise an eyebrow in surprise (I am learning their ways) and I realise that he is unsure of me and of himself and of this building and of this window with it’s view of the cathedral and the river and the sea and of his place in this whole of the world. He talks and I pretend to listen but I’m thinking about fucking and whether he is one of those men who come into their own when they’re pulling your hair and telling you how your going to be moaning around their cock and begging and I hope that he is, one of those men, and I wonder what it would feel like to undress infront of those green eyes and then I think I have no place to be wondering or hoping that he is one of those men and as the first pink covers my cheeks I watch him double space after a full stop and I call him an old man and nudge his shoulder with my shoulder and the pink goes away and his eyes fuck my mouth and I think it is good to be shutters and drapes and not wide open grassy see for miles plains. My hours are architecture and place making and public art and this is not something I want to run from. The wind is cold on my face. My days are full and without yearning. I don’t burn.

The author is unequivocally certain that despite her very best efforts there is no happiness to be found in this State.

The author will one day pick up her pencil.

The author is tired.

The author does not stop.

I wish you could hear how quiet it is here. The last of summer’s nights. The shh shh shh of the wind in the eucalyptus leaves. The snap of dry grass and twigs under the dog’s paws. Cicadas. It’s another kind of song. I wish you could see how dark the night sky is. Here. The stars. The sky full and rich, hangs velvet curtain low. After the rush of stories and words and sorrow and music and a thumping beat. This is all I want. I don’t seek the grit, the dirt, the tarnish of before. More than anything this stillness. This alive. This quiet. This solitude. This alone. I think sadness stains skin and teeth and bones and tongue and eyelids and fingertips. I think it soaks and seeps and bleaches strong.  There are so many descriptions, dark and bruised and melancholy. I think of cherries and blueberries and the tart sweetness of my tongue. My purple blue stained fingers. And always we must do something to clean the stain, to cleanse and to make fresh and bright and shiny. Like happiness is an imperative. I can listen to the song without singing, I’ll take the imperfect sweet, I’ll wear the stain. More than anything this alone. This dark heavy with stars. To make my own.

We walk in the rain to a small but crowded restaurant. The trestle tables are covered in plastic, the chairs uncomfortable, the floor dirty, but the food – the food takes us both travelling away from here, somewhere we’ve both been. We soak up broth with freshly baked bread, exclaim over the texture of hand made noodles and we talk and talk. We have the same memories. These small commonalities are good, sustaining. We remember and we make real. It is rare for me, the river, the tower, the lavender sky, that time, so singular, so far away. When we finish eating she tells me about her grandparents. They’ve been married for over 50 years and her grandmother still feels a mixture of relief and excitement when she hears her grandfather’s car in the driveway. As she talks she holds her hand over her heart. The gesture is as sweet as the story. Amongst the broken jaws, the stab wounds, the brusied faces, these are good stories to hold, to savour, as nourishing as food. She tells me she feels the same way about her partner and I can’t remember if I’ve ever felt that way, past the beginning, past the heat of fucking and want and lust. She tells me about knowing what is right, what to need, what to want, and I listen.

A pink balloon, small and deflated, dances across the footpath in the wind. It’s stuttering movements reminds me of a wind-up toy. I pick it up when it nears the curb, take it to the park, set it down in the flowerbeds.

I walk back to the office slowly. A man who works in a neighbouring office stops me before I get to the door, says hello, wishes me a good afternoon, a Happy Valentine’s Day. I smile and thank him. He’s tall, much taller than me and lean. He wears the same t-shirt every Friday. I make my own uniform too. We’ve  never spoken before and I’m surprised by this conversation. A co-worker asks me if there’s pizza and a rom-com on the agenda tonight. I’m continually surprised by the assumptions people make. I smile my usual non-commital smile. We make up what we don’t know, what we need to fit.

I can’t seem to write. The stories are the same. I can’t quite hear the song. I miss it. I wonder if this too comes from a lack of repetition, another hardening. Beyond all that, I wonder about the letting in, the need to share. There is sadness. There is something that resembles comfort.  There are mouths, and hands and bodies in the dark. There is no need to tell.

Show me how to sing.