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.

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.

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.

No matter how creatively I bend rules, I can’t do this for him, for her, for them, for me. I know this isn’t my failure. This fault is so much bigger than I am. When I apologise my voice breaks and he hears it. He tells me all the ways that he has learnt to be ok with what is going to happen. I tell him that I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed him and he tells me that disappointment is part of life, part of living. Some conversations feel like confession and absolution.

I don’t know how not to cry.

I think about all the parts that constantly fight to be heard. All the parts that disagree. I think about the one brave thing I’ve ever done. The one decision I ever made. I think that I’ve only lived when I’ve struggled not to die. All the half-measures I’ve chosen. My wish is still to be invisible. To float through unseen. At some point there has to be honesty. Of sorts.

I don’t want words or song or touch or the sea.

I’m packing moving boxes. There is so much to leave behind. Scraps of paper that fit inside a matchbox. To bury under the maple in the backyard. To leave, always to leave.

Perhaps the last truth is uncertainty.

He covers my eyes with his hand, his fingers in my mouth.

I read them back and the words are beautiful. Beautiful perfect hollow.

There are other letters. They are not written perfectly. Every day words. Unmeasured. Mispelled and commonplace. They make no colours, but they sing. In each a sentence, so lovely, so true, I’m blinded and I see. There are letters that say I will stand up for you. I will fight. This fast and swift heart.

We make soft plans. Liquid plans. In these plans we make rain and food and candlelight and posters and hands are tied together with ribbon, and sometimes, with rope. We make dreamplans.  We make dreamplans when we can’t stay away, when every other option defeats us. When I say no and he says yes and I say yes and he says no and because we can’t stop we find other ways to agree, to hope, to want. We barely touch.

She tells me that when she looks at us she sees a white string that goes from the centre of him to the centre of me. She says it’s always there, visible, even when we’re not in the same space. She says she imagines we’ve always been like this. It’s not like me to think like this. To accept like this. To believe like this. To sit still like this. To feel sure like this. Her words are too earnest for me, too easy to dismiss. When I tell him later, he takes my hand and he doesn’t let go. He tells me that he loves me, that it’s quick and confusing and strange, and strong. Love. I nod and I cry and I tell him that I love him too. We are known.

I think of you. How right you were. I remember you telling me that I’d speak clearer, write clearer. I wonder exactly how much I have to thank you for. I wonder, in all those moments, when you talked and I felt, when you said you’d break me open, I do wonder. But then, I can be honest with him. He is the most honest person I’ve ever known. He tells me things that strike so close to raw and to wound and to hurt they take my breath away. And I don’t run or hide or redact. I listen and I react and he lets me. And his grey green eyes don’t stray from mine. He holds me with him. And I want to tell him everything. And nothing is a weakness and everything is a strength. He sees me just as I am, and I see him, I see him and I love him. I love him and it’s so precarious, so unsafe, the scariest kind of loving someone I could imagine for myself. I don’t cry. I don’t worry. We make dreamplans. I believe in him, in this too quick, too sudden, too soon, too inexplicable bond. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever known you see. Unscripted. Particular. Mine.

I think of a girl with her arms wrapped around a boy. Her face close to his. They’re smiling in colours of green and orange. They couldn’t be anywhere else. They choose, have chosen.

I learn every day.

He can’t and I can’t and so what more?

A homeless mother and son. The promise of work, a home on the other side of the country. We phone airlines, ask for donations, call in favours, cry, laugh, flirt and yell. We slam down receivers, we hold hands, we dance in our offices. We conjure tickets, luggage, a change of clothes. We bend rules, we issue cheques, we order taxis. We do it all for the hope that burns at the back of our throats. Their dog runs around the office long after they’re gone. I watch her fret, stand with her nose pressed to the glass door, looking, looking. We all do. Just this once, a victory but we haven’t won anything. We call the animal shelter and as we walk her down the street I think fuck it, just this once, let’s fucking win, just this once, let this be complete. We take her back to the office with us and I spend the next two hours going from coffee shop, to recruitment centre, to mail room, to housing office, and I smile and I ask nicely and I tell her story, and I go back to the office with enough money to pay for one dog’s flight across the country home. We stay back hours after the office is shut, huddled around the phone so we can tell them she’s on her way, and when they cry we cry too, because for once, we haven’t failed, for once we’ve done everything we can, for once hope doesn’t echo empty.

I drink because I’m angry and because I’m sad and because I’m happy. He takes me in his arms and whispers apology. I shake my head no, I don’t want to be held and I do, and I do and I do.  Everything he says is wrong, incomplete, insufficient, I have no more time for words and his hands, his fingers, pressing hard, tracing the join of my bones, and I moan soft against his neck and apology turns to need and to the swiftness of love and I turn away and far.

I wake up head pounding, mouth dry, heart screaming. The florist and the jeweller and the cake shop.  I think that I should be happy for her, and I’m horrified by how little thought I’ve given to the significance of this day for her. I buy her a garter. The bouquet is lovely, but the buttonhole is beautiful. Two small white rosebuds, gardenia leaves and a sprig of green wattle. I’m running so late and the dress I’ve set aside to wear doesn’t fit, so I throw the first dress I see on over the stockings I’ve slept in add boots, grab my camera and go.

I can’t breathe on the drive to her house. What’s left? I think of my father. Of how dead he really is. We do not die once, if we die at all. I think that he’s somehow nearby, watching, happy for her, happy that she’s found love again. I think he’s right there with me, holding my hand, and then I remember that I don’t believe in anything other than this here.

She looks lovely in her fitted silk dress. She’s nervous and her hands shake when she takes the bouquet from me. She asks me if she looks pretty and I don’t let myself think of mothers and daughters. I tell her she is and I mean it. My sister gets into the car and she looks slapped too. My sister.

I walk over to him with the buttonhole. It’s so beautiful, I almost want to keep it. Wonder absurdly if I could somehow hold onto it for a few months, another wedding. The buttonhole on his new suit is stitched shut. None of us have scissors or a pin. When he takes a pocketknife and cuts a hole into his jacket I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. I hug him. I am not so ungrateful. Later, he begins a sentence I don’t let him finish. Now that I am your father. He is my mother’s husband and he is years too late. The hardening. I am ungrateful and mean.

My skin hurts when they get to the vows. Another wedding, months away. I take photos and listen to the sound of the wind, the birds, the traffic. I think about the email I read moments before leaving the house. The words that tell me to stay strong, to survive this day, the words that tell me that I am, infact, loved. I look down at myself and realise that I am dressed, head to toe, in black. My cheeks flush scarlet.

I remember the night before. His mouth at the corner of mine. All the almosts. I remember drinking beer from the same bottle. I remember anger and holding hands. I don’t want him to speak to me anymore. I don’t want to hear anymore apologies. I remember him telling me he wants to fuck me until it isn’t fun for me anymore. I remember the room spinning, the rush of want between my legs. I remember and I remember and I remember.

We sit together at the reception. My sister and I. We talk and laugh for the first time in months. This bond, this survival, this hurt, this raw. This only thing we have left to share. This only thing that momentarily brings us close. The two girls at the cemetery, always holding hands, always watching, always speaking without words. My sister. She laughs and under her breath whispers As far as I’m concerned this day never happened. I laugh too. I want to squeeze her hand. All the things we try so hard to forget. All the rememberances we won’t allow.

I watch my mother with her friends, how uncomfortable she is when they talk to her about us. I understand, perhaps for the first time, how it’s easier for her without us.

Today I do not look at him. I avoid the kitchen, the corridor, the courtyard where we sit and smoke. I have my lunch at the church. Alone. I will never learn to feel less than I do.

In the kitchen he rubs my back while I fight my lunch. This work, these people, there is no shrugging of shoulders, there is no easy reply. Instead there are questions and there are words and there is pushing and confronting and acknowledging and learning. We talk about the past, how it rings inside the future, how it breathes hot on your neck today and everyday. We use words like loss and grief and fuck and pain. He lets me cry, while he talks and when he uses the words self care I want to fly across worlds, to scream, to shout, to say you didn’t fucking know me at all. Limited people, he says. We are all limited different the same. I think of the patterns that time makes, that we make, that I’ve made. My chest is heavy with sob cries.

He emails, back and forth, across cables, across corridors. We do not make eye contact, but he touches me every time we see one another. This choice he makes or doesn’t make, he tells me it will haunt him, that I hurt him, that he wants to hurt me. I don’t care for his words. For hauntings or for hurtings. I am tired of choices unmade, convincings, hopings, lovings, wantings, longings. Eyes of every colour, all the colours. I’m mad at him for speaking on it, for not leaving things unsaid and easy and full. He is mad at me for being, for smiling, for the colour of my eyes, the clothes I wear, for being different and familiar, small, interesting and smart, strong, soft, a failure. I tell him about square happy and I’m reminded of the assessment I failed not so long ago. Those small written words. I’m tired of assessments too. Much like the stories, the words sit heavy, I’m tired.

I am buying the bouquet. Something small, fragrant, expensive. She’s changing her name. This feels like the end of us all, the resting place. This is an erasure. Of me. Of us. I wonder if I ever was her daughter. I am buying the bouquet.

His daughter, she tells me, is moving out of home. She doesn’t feel wanted there. I feel guilty and sick. She is my mother, my responsibility. She hasn’t changed, we taught her nothing. She will hurt them too. Break them too.

I think of you. You who would know without knowing, without words, with the silence of tongues and the pressure of fingers hard around wrists. Remember how I wanted you? Remember how you said they made us this way? You were wrong about everything. And nothing.

He reaches for my wrist and pulls up my sleeve. Traces a finger over my tattoo. His mother has tattoos around her wrists. To cover the scars. Flowers and stars.

I think of you. Like a child.