She Was.

early may

She Was. — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:16:06 +0000

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.

Late April

She Was. — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:19:04 +0000

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.

early april

She Was. — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 11:16:36 +0000

I’m not sure I remember how, but I remember how it feels. Afterward. The rush of clean, the bleed. The cut of words on paper, on thighs, on broken skin. The melody of sadness and reprieve. This disbelief, and I will not be saved. I remember the feel of hard wood against knees, my rolled up skirt not quite touching the floor. The solace of ritual, hands cupped, eyes turned upward. Confession. Hard wood floors and a new absolution. I bought a jade green shirt today, aviators, my hair is dark and long. Sitting, legs crossed, there is warmth in the sun, the metaphor of spring and bodies sacrificed. Like no one dies in autumn, so no one is reborn. If I had faith. The uncounted days stretch like joy, my body unknots, I sink then float, contentment like happiness, a kind of grace. Fingers to temple and mouth and heart. It takes so little to believe. Forgive me father, for I have sinned, all that fervour.

Mid-February

She Was. — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:14:43 +0000

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.

up in the air

She Was. — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:50:24 +0000

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.

7

She Was. — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:50:14 +0000

Jane’s body, a continent not her own.

The long straight highways of her torso. The scorched heat earth, the film of sand and sweat. The ochre-coloured dust, fine streaks on the windscreen when you’re driving from here to the centre. Dust that settles and stays and can never be quite wiped clean. And then, the wet of lakes with no bottom, or, a bottom she dies to reach. Her spine the raze of fires, the burning pulse. All in a row, cotton flying in the wind, her hair soft and singed.

Jane’s eyes, half closed, between sleep and awake, the not dream-state, and she holds her knuckle to her mouth – a lullaby – and her body – a continent no longer her own.

air

She Was. — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:42:12 +0000

She’s my mother’s age, crying hazel eyes, brown long curly hair, white shirt clean and ironed crisp, homeless. She has a daughter my own age. Two grandchildren she loves, a girl and a boy. She doesn’t know how it came to this. To sleeping in her car, on a friend’s couch when she can. Sometimes her daughter lets her stay. She looks after her grandchildren while her daughter is at work. She loves her days with them. Cooking big hearty meals, playing games, telling stories. She gets tired more easily than she used to. Her body aches even when she sleeps stretched out on her daughter’s spare bed. When he comes home at 6 pm she goes to her room, the guest room, and stays there. Her daughter tells her not to come back out until after he’s gone to bed, pleads with her to be careful, to be quiet, not to wake him, not to disturb. They’ve never really gotten along and when he sees her, hears her, those nights she hears her daughter cry. He’s a big man, she knows the sound bones make when they break clean. I hold my hand close to hers while she speaks. She doesn’t know how it came to this, to have no place to call her own. I tell her that it’s good that she came today, that I’ll listen for as long as she wants to talk. It’s just that I’ve started to lose hope she says and the red hot knot in my chest throbs.

I sit across from her expecting very little. This is work suggested counselling, gentle but persistent. I don’t want to find the words, I expect the same derision, the same critique. Over emotional, too soft, naive. I tell her this and she nods, me too. She tells me that naive is a compliment, that there’s an innocence to naive that is rare and lovely. I feel so far from innocence, from lovely. We talk about the feeling of caring, the feeling of wanting to make better, to soothe, to solve. We talk about other ways of coping, of numbing yourself to the story. We sit quietly and smile at one another. Human amongst machinery she reminds us both, Don’t let the dark in. I don’t want to leave. I want to sit in this sun lit room for a few minutes more. I want to sit with this woman who calls me soul sister, who reminds me that what I am is good, that who I am is better than I allow myself to be. I think about all the time that passes between. She walks with me to the elevator and we hug like old friends, email addresses exchanged.

I help her fill out forms, I tell her about wait times and wait lists. She nods when I say two years. It doesn’t matter, I can wait she says, You’ve given me something to hold onto, that’s all I need love. She takes my hand in hers and I want to tell her, come home with me, live with me, love me, I miss my mom.

There is so much helplessness in what I do. It’s the easiest thing to get stuck in. For someone like me. I remember every you. I swallow up what she calls the dark. That metaphor I’ve never liked. At the very centre, somewhere beneath my ribs it sits. Light and dark. Together. Whole. I write only to remember lessons learned.

we call it life

She Was. — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:50:27 +0000

Allison has strawberry blonde shoulder length hair. It is cut a little uneven. She isn’t trying to be “fashionable”. Allison has big blue eyes that are often bloodshot. She says she has “bad hayfever”. Allison wears her clothes two sizes too small. She says that she is not the prettiest girl in the room, or the cleverest, but she knows that she’s ok. Allison’s husband wears combat pants and dark sunglasses. Seeing the dead naked makes him uncomfortable, but he likes finding answers. Allison has heard these stories many times. She pretends to listen but her bloodshot blue eyes don’t follow the words.

Allison tells Jane about highschool. She tells Jane about drinking and fucking and failing at everything. When she tells these stories she gets a little shy but Jane stills laughs out loud and throaty at all the funny parts. Jane likes listening and laughing. Jane likes the way Allison’s eyes sparkle when Jane laughs. Allison puts her hand over Jane’s. You make me want to tell you things. Jane takes Allison’s hand between both of her. That’s because we are friends, she says, and squeezes.

Jane walks to the park for lunch. As she walks she can feel the wet slick between her legs. The heat, and the throb. Jane is not surprised. Jane likes to listen and laugh. Jane loves tucking stories behind her ear.

Mark sits with Jane at the park. Jane tells him about dancing with her dog late at night in her room. She tells him about kicking her legs in the air and clapping her hands. She tells him about the stars in her sky. He asks her about the devil’s saucepan and she tells him about Orion. Mark takes Jane’s stories and puts them in his backpocket, safe with his wallet, his keys and his phone. He’ll take Jane’s words out later and put them in his mouth. When he lies in the backyard with his arm around his dog, he’ll suck the sweetness right out of them. In the dark, he’ll run his hands over his head and remember the soft of hair.

Here in the park, Mark looks at Jane and tells her that he loves that she tells him things. That he loves every shape her mouth makes when she speaks. He talks to Jane and his thumb throbs remembering Jane’s mouth wrapped tight closed around it. Jane looks at him and tells him the truth. You love me, Mark, she says, You just love me.

Jane spends the weekend at the sea. She doesn’t read on the sand or sleep. Jane wonders if the clouds where he is become the sea where she swims. She thinks this can’t possibly be true but she kneels in the water and lets the waves break over her head just incase. Before she opens her eyes to the sting she takes a mouthful of water and holds it in her mouth for as long as she can. She goes to work unshowered and ocean clean. When she knows he’s watching she licks her summer bare shoulder long and slow. She tastes the salt of all of them.

Three

She Was. — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:53:34 +0000

The taxi driver’s wife killed herself. He blames it on a soul-less place. On a place where everyone is in a hurry and no one is going anywhere. He’s getting out, he says, with a guitar and a photograph. When he says the words he laughs and laughs and laughs.

Lenny’s lover left him. Just like that. Lenny feels the time alone, and the fat around his tight shirt middle. His glasses are always finger print smudged. He takes photos that make his city look more hopeful than it is. Lenny bathes everyone in gold light with his lens. He lies in his bathtub all night long and drinks beer after beer after beer. He doesn’t like the taste.

Sam watches his reflection in the windows of his office building. He watches as the passing cars erase him, the trail of their headlights. He runs his hand through his thinning hair and wonders when he stopped feeling anything for anyone. He wonders which one she was.

the church on flinders

She Was. — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:39:14 +0000

For what purpose to write, to speak, to form words? What to tell, to describe, to convince, to bleed? When there is nothing, there is nothing. To tell of everything, the everything in the space between fingertips that no longer touch? To tell of the air there? The charge that bodies feel, the hum pull we make in our skin as it raises, the breath that holds. Between us. When mouths say no over and over again, first yours – then mine, and the sadness that doesn’t hide across the play of faces when my eyes won’t meet yours. I said – to make someone less lonely, fight their eyes with yours, hold them there. I don’t look and I don’t see. I don’t form words for you anymore. You don’t ask for them. But our bodies fight to be noticed, for the space we leave when we go, for the hum, the hum, the hum. Between us. My hands miss yours. Every day. My mouth aches. I wonder how we each live with the decisions we re-make.