Down In Me

I was created solar, seafaring, sanguineous. Carved from embattled men, rallying cries and rape. The product of colonial tiles set in the sun baked bones of a well-structured terrace. My salty tears were used to water the crops, raise the tides of the dusty river and pound the white linens clean. My earthly nature robbed; the moist black earth ripped from my lush, fertile grip. I’m rainforest flights of red blue-green, large-beaked and feathered. I decorate decay with lashings of emeralds and gold.

On a breezy night, on the veranda of a cabin perched on the side of a mountain, I lounged on a multicoloured hammock while an olive boy kissed me. He pretended to be shy and pressed his lips to mine, gently concealing his eagerness. His baby skin chin, baby smell, babyish. My baby fat cheeks, pale-plump squashed against his lean face. I inhaled coffee grass, baby hair, muddy mountain goats and slept with my hand in his.

I tried to recreate my hammock lain dreams some time later. I lay like the dead, fingers tightly interlocked over my breathing corpse stomach. Turkey vultures circled crying overhead like horny men. Within minutes, an intrepid sparrow took a shit on the side of my face. I ran into the house hollering. They wanted my body, swinging warm in the colourful threads, flanked by pines and common garden snakes.The next day I took the hammock down forever and recoiled from a beetle on my way back inside. I’m western concrete, earth-devouring and misspent youth.

Once there was and once there was not, plenty of time in which to co-exist and extinguish the various flames while looking into eyes streaming with sincerity. Scattered showers cleansed the forests and motorcycles made love to popsicle sticks that glow. Droplets of sparkle-clean mountains made us laugh. Anguish and austerity, we barely glimpsed through glass globes.

I am blank ashes and soft, weathered focus and torrential outpours of sludge; ice in the furnaces of my history set alight through a blazing dim. And in the din of my fool-proof home, I want fairy lights for dinner. While in their soft calm, mechanical beasts swish glide down city streets. I take a crack at stabbing candor. I point and shoot, and miss them all running. I’m tattered pieces of cloud. You’re humid prayers for rain.

Following is the original, un-fucked with version of this: I wrote something for you but I broke it. I’m sorry. 

No childhood memories. I spent a few years systematically hacking away at what I thought were the bad memories, not realising - okay, not caring - that I was not only wiping the slate clean but wiping away any recall of said slate.

When I emerged from my self-imposed haze, few things were left. Those were kept alive through repetition and reinforcement. Pictures, oft-told stories. I let others choose my remembrance and bend it to their will, perhaps forge it in their own image. Did it really happen that way, I don’t know, but that is the way I recall the telling of it so that is the only possibility within my current reach.

I handpicked the finest recollections of early adolescence for myself, though. Years of raging angst pounded out in earnest on many a pretty face, pre-teen love affairs with nearly post-teen ex-convicts, brainless. Never a questioning glance at all those stumbling fumbles and foibles of a truly well-spent youth. And firsts: first drink, first smoke, first trip, first toke, first cut, first fuck (no not that one, the real one), first fall. Tiny merit badges of honour and courage and youth, for fuck’s sake, YOUTH! on my well-worn lapel. What? What’s wrong with that? Those who escape relatively unscathed tell the stories on which future memories are forged.

I’m afraid, though. I’m afraid that none of that matters and I’ve forgotten a detail of actual importance, something vital to my overall well-being, my survival. Because once I’d stopped purposefully hacking, the hacking didn’t stop. It took on a life of its own and now I can barely bring back what I said yesterday to take back. I’m great with trivialities. Phone numbers I’ve dialed twice, song lyrics I’ve read while singing along. Beyond that, memory is just a wasteland of unfulfilled longing.

No one steals a glance. I don’t. 

Spend the day in that woolen haze, where time passes us by, as it forever has; our awareness wading through this thickly muddled murk. Our vanity, idle fancies that fancy themselves.
 
Woolgathering, comatose, serene, in waiting. Surrounded by tall grass. Feigning alertness while waving away the smoke. Worlds away, flickering the stars, bouncing in the clouds or hovering somewhere just below the leafy canopy. Anywhere but here. Anywhere above. Anywhere beyond. Anywhere away.

Survey my fanciful dreamscape and pluck an idea from within the folds. Cold hands, finger probes; shapely shapes. Misshapen. Everything exits through the door opposite, makes a wrong move and never stops for direction.

That clean and simple touch.

Where are we going? Which way are we headed? Feet shuffles that mirror each other. We reach out to hold before we scurry away to pretend we’re deaf. We couldn’t hear. That sound? It wasn’t us. No. It definitely wasn’t us. It couldn’t have been us, no. We were out at the time. Away.

Home to hug the radiator, all alone where no one can see. Mired in melancholy for those unexplained absences. Many, varied, self-imposed. Your existence breaks my concentration so I think you’d better go. I’m back to the field, then. To gather more wool for my vaporous collection.

Off to hire a convertible again? Your search for the sun amuses me. You know your sensitive skin is unaccustomed to the burn. Why aren’t you satisfied in your own place, your native homeland with your birth mother who tended to you with utmost care?

The city cries out for you today and all you can do is wave her a half-hearted goodbye. You make me sick with your holiday dreams ephemeral and unsubstantial.

Your fair weather lust has taken hold again. We cannot cater to your fanciful desires. We simply can’t keep pace with your tiresome demands. I prefer it here a million, million, a million times over. In the cold, the grey and damp. I prefer the rotten stench of alcoholism, truth and overuse. So go. Go and see what you might find in the clear blue sky. I know everything truly necessary is right below this heavy cloud, tangled in the sour sweet pollution of this mouldy air.

Go. Go then. We won’t wait up but we’ll still be here. We’ll still be right here when you decide you want back in to the fold. Façades may change but our innards remain their broken same. We may fix the broken door eventually, I should think.

Absent-minded, I watch you take off, day after day. My ears full to bursting with the rumble of your roar. The ground grumbling beneath my vibration. Lifting your nose towards the clouds, your glistening wide body glides effortlessly off the strip. Overwhelmed with the need to crawl inside you and feel you hoisting me away, disappearing me into the distance. Is there a flight to nowhere? A place where no one greets you when you land? A new time zone in which to find solace? My bags are packed yet my seat belt remains unfastened. I won’t be going anywhere for now. If only because I can’t stand the scrutinising eyes of your supposed protectors.

I slowly open my eyes again. This near impossible task will be my biggest achievement for the day. But you’re not there to mouth your approval. I head out without breakfast, as usual. No one giggles a command of protein to start the day proper.

Right turn on the wrong street and from the opposite side. Who will set me back on course? Not you. Your sense of direction is slightly off these days. I slip and trip at that uneven spot again. You know the one. The one you’re not there to warn me against, to dust me off from.

Gadgets remain eerily quiet through the day. No tender secret messages or quick breathy calls. No hurry to return home only to be greeted by a silent, wistful cat. Who will chastise me for not looking after the mundane chores and everything beneath me? Another takeout you’ll never again force feed me with fumbling chopsticks.

And in the dreaded night, between fitful spurts of sleep falling, I find no stinging palm to strike my flesh and remind me that I am not purely made of written words. That despite my best efforts to mutilate, I continue to own a body that can still be felt. That my gaping holes can still be glutted to the brim. That I’m not alone in the cold sweat of thought. That I can still touch the beauty in this mortal moment.

Trivialities, all told. In truth, I don’t much care. And you’re not around to insist that I do.

I’m not lovestruck, lovelorn, lovesick. Two girls in my bed and love piled in the corner. Lying on either side of me, pink flesh and honey-coloured bottoms whispering obscenities through my mind. Uncovered, we explore ourselves and each other in turn surveying the vast, internal landscapes. Their cold, white feet kiss my insides as we stroll in the meadow and drink from the stream. We pet unicorns and pluck barely blooming morning glory from its rightful nestling among the leaves. We bathe in a warm, naked light, briefly pausing to admire the stillness. A tranquil white glow emanates from our pores. Touching the empty spaces between our bodies we sigh and laugh in unison. I’m not in love with love or this idea or this thought. On a sleepless night a rare and fleeting occurrence: I want nothing more than what I’ve been given.

VictoriaDistrict line at 7:35 on Monday morning. I searched for identifying features, I know some of them, enough of them to know. I looked strangers in the eye but saw past them. They’re not you. Not what I know of you. Not what I’ve seen of you. But if I saw you, would I know you? Would you know me? I’m the invisible one, drifting along in my thoughts. Every morning I mindlessly drop my book at your feet. You retrieve it and eyeball the cover before handing it back to me. You alight at King’s CrossActon Town with a beguiling frown. Drink?

Olfactory memories wafting in uninvited and perhaps imagined. I’m doing something or nothing and it hits me. Someone walks by or doesn’t, wearing her perfume or not. A soft breeze brings it creeping through the window, tickling my nose.

There’s two distinct fragrances. The first she wore when she was frozen in time for me, at age 29. The scent carries soft, billowing folds of muted gold satin as a backdrop against the skin of her thin, tan arm glittering with tiny gold flecks. Tenderness and safety overwhelm me in an instant. An instant that’s impossible to hold.

The second is the fragrance she wears presently. Something more grown up but equally sweet that permeates everything but provokes no images.

We stopped being mother and daughter and became pretend-friends many years ago, when she was frozen, aged 29. Curiously, I’m 29 now. And every so often, I long for her essence.