I.
angling for a booth we settle for the bar. the bartender hovers in front of us. its date night. he locks eyes with her. can i buy you a drink? she squeezes my hand. i hold onto it. sure, if she gets one too. we laugh into $18 cocktails and get drunk on our invisibility. i push peanut shells in circles not knowing if I’m more embarrassed that he didn’t try to pick me up too, or angry at another entitled straight man.
before all this. i was only three years deep in learning how to keep my queer girl alive. learning how to move. bodies. cities. continents. i tried walking. 900 kilometres across spain before i was ready to breathe at home.
the first time, i ask to kiss her. we are in her sister’s bed. a copy of The Prophet is next to the bedside table light – hard plastic, shaped like rock. i read to her from the section about building houses. the amber walls glow a long night.
in the winter we drive across the country. in a town of desert, a bar of men stare at us as we enter. bodies and volume rise. they boom over us even before they know. we move the car to a ridge twenty kilometres away because it is safer to sleep on the edge of the earth than it is to be near those men and their eyes.
before all this. she asks to come in. it takes her months, but she does. limb by limb. she finds shelter in my peel, pull and thicken. after all the boys and their unwanted hands she finds me cocoon
enough.
II.
it’s me who finally suggests the break. she continues combing lice out of my hair in the bath. let’s just try it. for a few months. if we keep going with this open thing we’re gonna crash and burn anyway. she nods heavy and shows me a nit. we eat scrambled eggs at 12am and wear shower caps to bed. the thought that this could be the last time pulses desperately between our thighs. the shower caps don’t stay on.
after all this. four months and we havent seen each other once. the flow of customers eases again. i reopen tinder. scroll distracted. edit my profile and give up. its easier to hang onto the girl who doesnt want me than to swipe into the bodies that do.
i believe the break is a break. i dont hear her sealing up all the windows and walls. she bricks. i shout. she emails
powerhouse woman in you, thank you for opening my world
so much wider
eyes since being apart ive realised
big. even though
jump. attracted to women
around. if you had to plot me on the spectrum
no. i am more attracted to men.
edge.
i run myself a bath and wrack drool thrash. she will apologise for this erasing. but for now i am dripping
she can’t mean that. straight world mean that.
one and a half years can’t mean that.
spectrum mean that. spectrum means picking the edge you’re closer to
falling off.
you spend too long away from your queer girl
breath and then wonder why you’re clawing
at air. cant figure it out, can you?
you too-much-not-enough queer girl.
too much. talking trans kids at your niece’s birth. hiding armpit hair in your grandma’s kitchen. “do you have to turn everything into a gender thing?”
not enough. straight-passing babyface femme. blushing while you pay for that strap-on, wearing the hoops your mama gave you for your birthday.
i confuse queer
for crumble
for bloat
surface crackle
electricity
dissolve
short circuit
rash creeping over opaque mouth
my lungs, crooked trees burning a hot
how?
it doesnt matter. she left you to ember this down
alone. straight-edge be knife-ready each time.
this gonna shrink you, huh?
puff puff, nah. its time to slick myself.
out-sun the billow
and pulse that deading away
III.
she agrees to see me.
“are you still in love with me?” she asks, with the confidence of someone speaking from the other side. a boy on a skateboard catches up to a girl on roller blades. they lock hands and glide parallel, past us. i unthroat the electricity in my teeth. “i don’t feel nothing.”
i tell her about the fire dream i keep having: us stacking love hot, then her walking into the dark. when i realise she’s not coming back, all i can do is wait for it to ember down. she squeezes my arm in a that’s-poignant-kinda-way and we keep walking. i feel resentment give way to warmth. on elwood beach a dog arches its back and takes a shit.
she asks about my life now. I list the momentums. “im excited for you.” she looks at me with eyes grounded, already nostalgic. I am still a salt tangle trying to melt into her.
i dont tell her about mornings. how i surface, remember & unhatch dissolving. how i get up anyway. how coffee tries its best to churn a smile. how she is still on speed dial.
instead, we hold hands and walk back to st kilda. i stare at the kids staring at us. let them think we are girlfriend & girlfriend. it’s not a lie, just fucked up chronology.
she drives off. and all i can think about is eating a burger from that vegetarian place down the street. and how my body is humming. it pours. it pours on the drive home. i put the kettle on. spring the back door open and smell jasmine. my birthday. i take my washing off the line, head inside.
clues blurred in the rush
the gush of work
selective myopia
you sent cryptic texts
left palm prints on the mirror
a whiff of wrong
hope’s bright palette
out-coloured everything
the red clot, dread spot
couldn’t stop my daytrips
to a future with bunny rugs
big eyes & first steps
but you were hiding in
the ultrasound machine
coiled in the corner
of the grey screen
then – WHAM!
your taipan fang strike!
the venom was swift
in my defeated blood
you slithered away slowly.
working out a week later that all he wanted me
to do was leave all he wanted to do was
make me leave. sneaker meth authority.
bad dancing. lanky white cap rat face.
wanted to spit too. make people move.
whoever does not want to move. me
32 hrs after acid drop. ain’t moving. cost is
appearance but not interested in either. mental
block for back away. initial fear from smokers
balcony of undercover cop accusal comes back
to haunt. badge number to whatever pig hate i yell.
but still ask badge number. continued drinking second night
blind exuberance, intention of this place is a shouldered venom.
after everything i say, must still edge away
so slow plus stall backwards cause don’t want to get spat
on like i just saw rat face and mate do to someone a minute before.
above stairs get gently pushed in doors. favourite day
club insanity. nothing to do with me. did i say
something. chalky castor street malevolence. Westie
screech. was havin so much fun. Na just couldn’t stop well
lost. back dancing. no use in leaving. till he arrives and hauls
me up on dancefloor. hardly hear his expressive bewilderment
of job still to do. staring inevitable outcome. mucus covers return of
blankness like translucent mask. like the sunglasses i am missing, like this long
unimagined intention. pick beanie up from stand in front of speakers and very slowly
wipe it off. he screams you have to leave. no need for reply just as long as he doesn’t
touch me. and he does not want to fight.
sadness of extremity. joyous loss.
sat cold-arsed
at the bus stop
waiting on my job
I see what passes by
shorts with t shirts render men
fatter taller primary school boys
lipless sadness ground
into the skin
just women work here
no assessing trend
I
count up
nose-pickers shine on footsore
dads who proffer up a
juice box no mate see
I wear the short skirt you
chat me hard you
get me off this
cold hard ground
I
say
to my busmate
hey that looks like Plait Lady
and the pedophile
doesn’t that take you back
he did his time
we nod but in our side-eyes no
no no we don’t.
Ideal date: we do yoga and never touch. After years we turn into separate trees full of regret.
Ideal date: you convince me not to do drugs and I let you touch my hair when no one is around. We never mention it because it is a secret.
Ideal date: in different beds in different parts of the city we are both watching our phones, willing each other’s voices into existence.
Ideal date: we have been friends for nearly 5 years. We name all the different places we dream of going. We meet other people and take them instead.
Ideal date: you call me to let me know you’re seeing someone new. I know it makes you happy so I don’t ask any questions. I lie down.
Ideal date: I want to ask if I can kiss you but I just can’t tell. We wait one thousand years before ever speaking again.
Ideal date: I am a small bird cupped in your hands. You are also a small bird so there isn’t an unfair power dynamic.
Ideal date: we Skype, say things like ‘I never want to let go of your hand’ and kiss the webcam. We imagine our pixel selves as happier than us.
Ideal date: you forgive me after all these years.
Ideal date: you are across the road from me and we make eye contact. I am able to control my breathing.
Ideal date: you tell me about meromictic lakes and melting glaciers. I am nervous and say that you would make a pretty glacier.
Ideal date: I saw someone run over a cat earlier today but I think I’m okay.
Ideal date: for once I am not sitting in the rain trying to convince myself that I am not disappointed. The phone rings when I ask it to.
Ideal date: 12 years on and you are ready to apologise. When we meet up you get distracted by birds. We enjoy being soft around one another.
Ideal date: I say sorry and you don’t say anything. I say sorry again and you let me say it as many times as I like. You know it is important to me. I say sorry for the rest of our lives.
Ideal date: we go to couples therapy and I find out all your childhood traumas.
Ideal date: I am yelling “you are so hard to love” at a wall because it is easier than confronting you. Later, we meet up for Thai food.
Ideal date: you never punched me.
Ideal date: we are one of those middle age couples who feel comfortable publicly smacking each other on the bum at the pub.
Ideal date: for once, what we say aligns perfectly with what we mean.
Ideal date: it is finally the apocalypse we always dreamed of.
it was Wed night in a tryst & what was my nom
de scène? I was either getting ahead of or
tailgating myself, you were dressed in skin
I would be your cowl cowling at all hrs to make
sure. And all I said was, ‘You know we could’ve
collaged the ghost we needed out of merde &
feathers but some Man’s going to tell us what
we can. He’ll say hell he’ll be our major backer
can you believe but to hell, let’s brush
the glass dust from our heels let’s enter the
hatchway let’s lose our page again so well.’
A man so tall people whisper behind their Americanos knows more about the meaning of life than we ever could. He was born this height and he will die two centimetres shorter. He buys his clothes sized to fit. He imports ensembles from overseas in two styles: casual and formal. Casual is a polo shirt and light woollen trousers; formal is like the suit that stretches when you skimp on a dry cleaner and hang it wrong. When the tall, tall man’s clothes arrive by post, he folds them in an old-timey satchel cum briefcase and walks direct to the tailor, whose business the tall man keeps afloat. The tall, tall man talks of local matters, of which he is well informed, while the tailor darts about the man’s legs, unpicking hems and magicking inches into the already comical pants. The man is so tall he barely notes the pressure of the tailor’s fingertips or the measuring tape around his ankles. He cannot see any of this, of course. He is too far away. To have a tailor in one’s address book is a matter of life to a tall, tall man.
Now look at him in the café, bending to use the eftpos. In the queue, a millennial’s rolled-up jeans and bare ankles mock the tall man, and everyone is watching. As he types in his PIN to purchase a hunk of loaf with a smear of butter, the tall, tall man is thinking of his cousin arriving from Australia that afternoon, and for whom he must remember to make up a cot.
