#12.

No matter where you are when you wake up, it always feels the same. There is that fleeting moment of disorientation. You panic. Trying to remember who you are, what you're doing and where the fuck you are.
Usually this disorientation is only temporary. A tiny, anxious bubble that bursts almost as soon as you notice it.

Waking up on an emptying bus at dusk is different. It takes longer to remember. The bubble is less willing to comply. I take a few seconds longer. Shake my head as if it could clear the cobwebs of my confusion. I am on a bus. A quiet, empty bus.
The motor has stopped running and the last of the passengers are disappearing down the sticky flight of stairs and out into the fading day. The bus driver stands. She stretches and as she does this she looks down at me and offers a warm smile.

"Come on love, we've made it. Time to get going!"

I scramble into action, wiping the sleep spittle from my cheek and picking my bag up off the floor in one smooth action. The luggage has already been unloaded and by the time I make my own way down the sticky stairs and leave the superficial cool of the bus, most of the passengers have flitted away- off to lead their own exciting lives in this city.

And then I realise. The city. City. As in not home. As in the big, vibrating, buzzing, moving, colourful metropolis that has no idea who I am. I am reborn. I am seeing the world for the first time. I can shed my skin, my name, myself. I can be wiped away, like sleep spittle. This thought is scary and uplifitng at once.
I am awake. I like how this feels.

"That one yours then?" The bus driver asks, incling her head towards my suitcase. I nod, because I am feeling too many things to actually form coherent words. I take up the fraying handle, and it feels different. It no longer feels heavy- like it's holding my entire life together. It feels light. A companion, taking my hand and urging me on, into the breathless city beyond this artificially lit bus depot.

"Exit is that-a-way" Nameless bus driver smiles again. We are caught in a game of déjà vu. All I can do is nod.

Suitcase and I make our way towards the opaque glass doors. They twinkle with the life that is just behind them, outside them. Beyond them. All of a sudden it seems important to know the bus drivers name. I need to know and I need her to know mine. Despite being able to- My name is not something I will abandon. So I stop just short of my future and turn back.

"Uhm excuse me. My name's Bethany. What's yours?"
"I'm Brenda. Nice to meet you Beth."

Brenda. Okay.

"Hey Brenda? Thanks. For everything."

And just like magic, the doors slide apart for me.

# 11. Belonging[s].

"Attention passengers. Coach 115 will depart for Sydney from terminal 2 in five minutes. Please ensure you have all of your belongings with you. Thank you".

I glanced toward the dated, green megaphone as it amplified the message over the din of the terminal. The porcelain cone, putrid with stains of exposure, crackles punctually to life to herald the departure of every Greyhound Coach, but even so, my upturned cheeks were sprinkled with red dust as the detached voice sounded.

I considered briefly, the concept of belongings. It was true enough that most of my own belongings were tucked within the iron bowels of Coach 115, cramped tightly into the unremarkable green suitcase I wedged beneath a lavender makeup case, and a hideous yellow surfboard that I imagined was the exact colour of disease. It reminded me of typhoid, or jaundice, or something equally as nasty. The makeup case reminded me of my mother.

Other than the suitcase, I had only my tatty, hand sewn handbag and a backpack that housed the essentials, namely, two soggy cheese and tomato sandwiches, a bottle of water and my leather-bound journal.

But what of my other belongings? Surely the boys, in some way or other, belonged to me too? They were my brothers. My comrades. For a length of time, they were my problem. And I had certainly left them behind. My conscience gave a wrench.

A quickly formed line to my right caught my attention. The coach was boarding; it's many passengers scrabbling to assemble themselves in the que with the finess that a flock of hungry seagulls might approach a solitary breadcrust. To their left sat the tuckshop, and to my immediate right, the generalised hustle and bustle of skew luggage and confused tourists ambling about over the cesspool of scarlett earth. And then, as though some do-good bastard had divided the sea of debilitating red dirt himself, I saw across the terminal, a phone booth. It's vandalised plastic walls shimmered with heat in the afternoon sun, reminding me of the squiggly lines that surrounded crude dog piles Evan and I would draw as children. Evan. Evan, Jack and Noah. They would worry...wonder where I had gone...what had happened to me. If revenge is best served cold, I think that impetuosity is best eaten in a single meal, so as to prevent the regrets of an upset stomach later on. It's not something that can easily be zapped back to life after shelving.

In a snap decision, I slung my black canvas backpack atop my shoulder and ran like mad toward the booth. Though dirty, grimy and deftly decorated with purple chewing gum, the phone appeared to be in working order. I jammed my hand into the pocket of my shorts and withdrew the change I had received from my ticket. It would be just enough for one call, and in that thought, I began to realise how truly criminal I was behaving.

Having dialled the number, I rested my perspiring forehead against the window, focusing my eyes upon a few lurid green scrawls of graffiti. 'ron luvs jeeni'. And as I waited for someone on the other end of the line to pick up, I wished that things could be as simple for me as they seemed to be for Ron. If the complicated war taking place within the confines of my own heart could be soothed by a badly punctuated declaration of love - in green - in a public telephone booth, and better yet, with the misspelling of my name...I could only assume I would be happier for it. Blissfully ignorant.

The tinny recording of my own dulcet voice snapped my attention back to the task at hand. There was no one home. That would make things easier. I took a deep breath and coughed, naturally, from the crap circulating - or not circulating - in the gelatinous air of the phonebooth, and began.

"Evan, Jack, Noah - it's me. I-" I remembered the soon-to-depart coach and gave a start. The line of passengers had dwindled down to a mere two or three people. "I haven't any time to explain, but I'm going. I don't know when I'll be back." and as a parting word: "Don't let Noah skate in the house. I have to go".

And I hung up.

It took effort to burst from the overheated phonebooth without catching myself on anything. My mind wasn't on any of the four bag straps strung around me, strings around a ham; it certainly wasn't on my plaid jersey as the rusted metal lattice of the directory shelf tore a monumental hole in it. I was thinking about the skating. Why had I said that?

And as I handed my sweat-stained ticket to the conducter, bagstraps twisted sagging and completely out of breath, I was still silently berating myself for being such a menial bastard. Here was I, leaving everything behind, and the only thing they would have to remember me by was an answerphone recording telling Noah not to skate inside the house. "I'm sorry, what was that?" I asked, wondering why the conducter's finger was hovering in the vicinity of my ear.

"Sorry love, you've got dirt in your ear" she said, smiling kindly. It must have been the damned phone. I forced a smile and plodded onto the bus, wiping my hand over my ear as I went. Perhaps it was a sign that, belongings in hand or not, I could never quite leave everything behind after all.

# 10. Revel.

I have waited too long. Pretending to be comfortable in this sticky, fibro life. It's time to go.
The heavy, woollen blanket itches the backs of my reddening knees and with each passing second I can bear it a little less. I give up sitting on the bed. Pacing seems a good enough way to pass these shuddering moments. Waiting for my family to return seemed a significant thing to do, but now I ache to be free.

My pacing changes subtly, and I find myself making a slow tour of the house.
Each peeling room is torturously bright, as though begging me to remember it with painful clarity. I carry myself delicately, squinting to observe the humble dwelling. I know it would hurt more not to take a last look.

I reach the front door surprisingly quickly. Dark oak. Brass handle.
This door is full of false bravado. Obviously thinking itself sturdy and indestructible.
How wrong the notions we have of ourselves can be. Carefully I trace the carvings in the frame that mark our heights and ages at various intervals. It seems such a pointless way to mark the passage of Time. On a door that will be left behind in our dusty past. Our life- Time, is really marked by the doors we leave behind. Opening and closing and leaving.

With these bitter thoughts, all shards of sentimentality seep away.
I am sick of waiting. I want to feel reality beneath my feet.

The door moves easily when I touch the handle- reaffirming its true fragility. I take my suitcase and shuffle across the porch. The weather is impeccably perfect. Slightly windy, fresh. The kind of weather that tangles your hair and makes you believe something good is coming.
This weather demands a spring in your step. I will comply.

The local bus to the interstate terminal runs every half hour. Which gives me 15 minutes to get to the closest bus-stop. This weather will carry me there. As I take the front gate at a run, I can't help but click my heels.
Revelling

# 9. Snap.

What I need is a clean break. A clean break, and the ability to believe with my whole heart, that I can make one.

Your mother used to say that we were joined together at the hip. I'd always laugh - god, I miss Esme - but lately, it's all that I can think about. Two stark white bones, illustrious beneath the scrutiny of a sonographic eye. The knit is seamless, undetectable; it was, at least, until fight by fight we tore one another apart. My recollection of this is vivid, in fact I can still feel the splinters of bone. They pulse through my body tearing holes in every skerrick of vermillion flesh, until I'm certain nothing remains but bloodied shreds. The break itself is mangled. At times, I'm sure I feel the poker-edged porcelain grating against the pallid surface of my skin. I have not healed well. But I'm sure you know that much already.

You and I pillaged those pamphlets from the travel centre in town. We fancied ourselves on some secret sort of mission...an escape from the ceaseless monotony. We were tired of this life. In truth, I think you were lying...you loved it here. But you could see what it was doing to me, and being the romantic fool that you have always been, you hoisted yourself up onto a white horse that was really a flimsy basket of good intentions, and rode in to save me.

We never did get around to leaving. I was worried about the boys...about doing to them what our own mother did to us, and I couldn't do it. I never stop wondering what might have been different if we had just fucking gone.

I think that's why I saved them at first. They were my choose-your-own-ending reminder of the way things could have been. The way things should have been. The way things are never going to be.

Just lately, I began to realise that it isn't just this house that ties me to you...it's my every thought. My every breath. And with this knowledge in mind, I experienced, quite suddenly, an inexplicable desire to run...to run as far away from here as I possibly can.

I glance at my suitcase, packed and ready. The boys will be home soon. I won't deny that I seriously contemplated slipping away into the night. It would be easy...too easy. But I could never do that to them. I love them too much.

And so instead, I sit down on my bed. And I wait.

# 8. Apron Strings and the Cutting of Them.

Summer storms are so fantastic. You can forget everything in the midst of something so much bigger than yourself. I stand on the wide veranda, making trails with my toes in the ancient dust, letting the smell of the rain wash over me. With each flash of light more rains spills onto the hard ground. More and more rain. Heavier and heavier. The solid gray light hides everything. I can no longer make out the familiar shape of the beaten-up ute, the towering stringy-barks or the collection of slap-dash sheds that litter our property.

I close my eyes. It feels different already. I have to let you go. No forward motion can be made while I continue to cling to these glossy-magazine memories I have of you.


The sudden urge to walk out into the rain overwhelms me. Why not? The sticky heat presses in on me as I dance out into the rain. I take the three stone steps quickly, sticking my dry tonuge out as I go. The rain flattens my fly-away hair and makes my clothes heavy- but I suddenly feel lighter than I have in months.
How could life have ever been so complicated? It's just me, twirling in the rain a thousand miles, a thousand years away from everything.

I suddenly remember my mother, yelling as the first clap of thunder broke through the air. Slippers flapping she would run to whisk the laundry off the line. We'd watch awestruck as the rain bucketed down on her and still she'd stubbornly wrench the clothes, pegs and all, away from the sopping clothes-line. She was a sucker for a lost cause once upon a time.
But it doesn't matter. This is a memory that no longer belongs to me.

I think of the papers, pamphlets and brochures hidden beneath my matress. A pointless precaution I take to humour myself, no one would enter my room these days. Clear evidence of a lifetime of wishful thinking. Still, I must have known all along that these papers would be my saving grace. Papers so creased with wear, they are barely legible. Times, routes, fares. Maps and maps. Black and white information that will get me out of here. I think it is finally time. I have money, mind-numbing work at the local post office proved to pay off. No, money was never the issue. I am simply too sentimental for my own good. But it's time. Evan will survive, the boys will survive. It's time to make sure I will survive too.



And with the first of this years summer rain, I finally have a plan.

# 7. To The Bone.

I hear the strum of Jack's guitar and grit my teeth so tightly that it hurts. A, E, B fucking flat, over and over and over again without pause. It's going to be a long night.

No one bothers to scream at him anymore. Those first few weeks after Norah left, Evan would pound mercilessly against the flimsy chipboard wall that forced a line between their two small kingdoms. The tremors shimmied across the shabby boards and buried themselves beneath the woodwork until the entire house shook with them. My bedroom rattled with the zest of a runaway caravan, shifting the blanket of red dust that coats every surface of this god damn town, until the air swam with it.

I did not interfere at first. I left things to Evan - Evan and his incessant booming, the colourful threats growled at the space beneath the door that would have made our mother faint, if she had heard. If she wasn't globetrotting with Dad on the opposite side of the world, being everything to everybody but her own flesh and blood.

I was content to take shelter here with you...was desperate to have you distract me from Jack's tactless masochism, and even more, from my own internal carnage. You were brilliant. I didn't want to stop Jack from strumming. I was in favour of anything that promised to hold him together. The will to remain in one piece is so ridiculously fickle. Sometimes I would find him in deep sleep, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. I entertained notions of finding him something...anything to help him hang onto himself. A length of nylon rope looped three times, and tied securely at the small of his back...the tatty persian rug he claimed as his own swathed about him like a kevlar cocoon. Anything to substitute Norah's embrace. Though I know it better now, even then, I realised that there could be no stand-in. I left him be.

But the night that the arguments rocked my grubby chrome banker's lamp onto the hardwood floor; the night that I looked down to find myself in just as many pieces as the shattered jade glass, I made an exception. The boys almost met you that night. I remember bellowing as I tore myself out of your arms, half-crazed with fury. The guitar strumming stopped abruptly, but I could still hear the pounding. Poor Evan. I wasn't to know at the time that he had stopped just as dutifully as Jack, and that it was in fact the pounding of blood in my ears that I heard as I stomped bloodied footprints down the hall. It wouldn't have stopped me from busting his lip...nothing could have stopped me that night. Norah gave me that stupid lamp back when we were kids. It occured to me as you coaxed the glass shards from the sole of my left foot, that there was irony in crying over her again.

At least it stopped Evan from causing trouble. I must have frightened him on some level, because he never once bothered Jack again.

In a way, I miss the pounding. Now I have nothing to distract myself from those same three chords. They haunt my dreams. Worse still, you aren't here to help the wounds heal over...and now there's nothing holding me together. Nothing at all.

# 6 Wonderlost.

Lately, I try not to think too much. I prefer to focus on one minor task- like picking a fragile hole in the frayed lace curtains beside my bed. I concentrate so hard that the flurry of thoughts that usually centre around you, ebb away into a delicious nothingness.



Otherwise I think so hard about certain points in the past that it blocks out everything else. My mind dead bolts the door to new intruding, thoughts and shines a solitary light onto a particular memory.



I do not keep these tricks up my sleeves. I keep them in the warm palm of my hand. They are frequently needed. I think of you far too much.



Today I pluck a particular memory from the corner of my mind. I like to picture my mind as a field, full of flowers and smelling sweet. Daisies are my favourite, my field is full of them.
My mind is actually nothing like this. But I have become adept at fooling myself.

I got rid of my virginity as soon as I could. The sooner lost, the better I figured. His name was Jason Bridges and what happened between us was as passionate and fullfilling as a half empty cup of water. I don't regret it happening the way it did, I just wish I had a better excuse for it. No one in their right mind wants to throw their virginty away like a half-arsed maths exam that didn't deserve to be marked.

Norah said it changed me, but I think she wanted me to be different.

I think about this Jason Bridges memory. I roll it across my tongue daring myself to say it out loud just to hear something. Jason Bridges with his adolescent hair that smelt of motor oil and school hallways. Jason Bridges with his hands that felt so out of place against my back. Not like yours.

And the wall comes down. I thought about you. Fuck.
I bury this memory in the soft dirt of my mind field. Mine field it seems.
You are the mine- I am the unsuspecting civilian.