september08...

My hair is long again. For years I have had it hacked off, with a razor. I would feel the razor cutting through each strand like a caress on my scalp. He was happiest when my hair was short, when it did not brush against him, when it did not come out and stay on his pillow.

He liked to make the bed with mismatching pillowcases. Now all my pillowcases are white.

I remember another boy, young like me, exclaiming "look at your hair!" as it spread across his pillow and he pushed inside me, and pulled out; somewhere he had another girl. Her hair was yellow and she never brushed the kinks out.

I was always brushing the kinks out then. Before I chopped them all off.

When I was 12 it was long. I wore it scraped off my face everyday, and twisted back, when the fashion was to let it sweep heavily over the forehead, hiding flirtatious eyes. I didn't have any flirtatiousness in my eyes to hide.

But for him I chopped it all off. I butchered it with a straight razor. He had another girl, before me. She had yellow hair too; it was long and wild. She wasn't as smart as me. She let her hair free, and she didn't get to keep him. I did. But I didn't get to keep my wild hair.

january08...

can I prune more of the old things? cut the dead things off? there's so little I would keep, if I could cut bits off like I was a rose bush.

september08...

I dream that I'm swimming in dirt, beneath the lawn, deep into the ground, grasping tree roots to drag myself further down. I see only grit and earth, I don't breathe.
I wake up to the thud of an orange falling off the tree outside my window. I hear fruit falling in ripeness.

december06...

bird song and blue light. holes in the armour. daylight comes in

I lie in pretended languor wishing you'd touch my hair. I wish for a brave heart and brave thighs, the kind that would take away your ability to move. I wish for another moment when energy surges between us, screeching 'almost! almost!'

I wonder if I really want rougher skin and manners, if I really need kind words to become moans.

april08...

You tried to run your hands through my hair and your fingers got tangled. You couldn't extract them and what was meant as a caress became as clumsy as everything else between us. My hair isn't the kind of hair you can run fingers through smoothly and uninterrupted. It is (I am) tied up in knots.

When you pull your hands away, I can see a strand curling around one of your fingers.

february08...

it is very strange to think about that house. A child's house. With children's rooms and children's pets and children's toys in the bathroom; in that calm aftermath of Christmas that I can still vaguely remember. That house is a different thing for me. Their entire lives will be imprinted on those walls. And one day, I will barely remember it. I only remember pieces of it now. The colour of the bedspread, the quiet, the half finished projects. The broken chair. Stars clearer. A small door.When he is there, will he think of me? I imagine him glimpsing me in the rooms, some kind of flickering ghost of summer in a red cotton skirt and yellow shoes, trembling; a girl too far away to be anything but a postcard, which is how he liked me. I hope that he keeps the postcard in a box, unaddressed, with no stamp. I hope he takes it out to look at, every now and again.

june08...

I remember their hands most. Hands flitting in and out. Hands over my mouth, hands on me, in me, fingers pushing past my lips, threading through my hair or my own hands. Fingernails cutting slick flesh, or finger pads fretting me so hard it hurts. Licking wrists. I remember breath drawn in and teeth. Words spoken and not. But I remember only a few moments of love. Only moments. And in none of those moments do I know that both hearts were full.

83-08...

my little sister is a puzzle, one from a frayed box with lots of colour and a few missing pieces. My little sister looks like spring, with a little nose and sparkly freckles. She can put flowers in a jar and they will remind you of a meadow. She can do a cartwheel with a cigarette in her hand, she can roller skate backwards, she isn't afraid to tackle when she kicks a footy around. My little sister always turns on the radio station just as her favourite song begins. My little sister is brave. When I see her hands, I remember what they looked like when they were much, much smaller. We know all of each other's songs.

Me and my little sister, we are the dancers.

february07...

He said he once had a dream about me; I drove us off a cliff in my little car, into the sea below. He had felt only irritation that we would have to swim back to land, rather than fear he was going to die.

I told him I had once dreamt of him too; of standing on a rusty metal jetty over the sea, seeing him fall off and sink into the green tinted water. I panicked, hoping that somebody else could save him, because I knew I couldn't.

september08...

there's nobody here today. The light is harsh and white, and I'm thinking about the colour that the light turned when it was coming through those curtains.