izzy

Katie wouldn’t do it anyway. I’m pushing through the bushes at the back of the oval and walking out onto the green is like coming up for air. I can feel the sting of the air floating up cold from the dewy grass and brushing over the grazes on my knees. My palms are burning. A shiver reverberates through my sternum, and my breasts bob a little as I walk fast through the goal posts. Scottie got one in last week, bouncing off the post – the kind of kick that looks like it couldn’t possibly go in. Won the game. Stupid prick.

*

sarah

Postcards from Indonesia:

‘Everyone is so friendly here’, my mother says, but I am too cynical to see it.
I see the smiles and the hellos and the palms pressed together, and I presume that as soon as our backs are turned, the eyes start rolling. Because that’s how I would be if I had to work for a bunch of fat Australian tourist idiots who keep wanting pointless shit all day, every day.
We drive through the mountains that look like storybooks, and ‘Bali Hai’ plays in my head.
We pass a wall with ‘BRUTAL UBUD’ graffitied on it in black, and I want to know who wrote it and why.
There are thousands and thousands of shops selling perfectly filigreed silver and beautiful wood carvings and vast stone statues and I have no idea who buys them all.
I am beginning to appreciate how overpriced ISHKA is.
Our driver stops every few kilometres, points at green sultry perfection and says ‘Stop here for photo, yes?’
We stop here for photo every time.
My mother steps into a ditch in front of a rice paddy and gets her foot all muddy, and the driver doesn’t even laugh at her. He becomes deeply concerned about our capacity to cross roads after that.
He waits for us for hours as we wander through temples and swim in holy springs and pretend to understand what all the fountains are for.
A temple guide asks if we want to make an offering, and we say no, and he says something that sounds like ‘You make me sick.’
Bartering stresses me out.
I always imagine the women at whom I am desperately saying numbers is thinking either
a) Fuck you, you entitled white bitch. You are haggling over money that is nothing to you and everything to me; or
b) You’re a fucking idiot. I am ripping you off so hard it’s not even fun any more.
Our bedroom door opened at 6 am this morning – the little click of the security card slot, then a spill of light onto the dark wall. I couldn’t see who it was, so I yelled ‘Hey!’ and the light disappeared and the door swung shut. By the time I got up and looked out, there was no-one there.

*

izzy

I put the recycling in the garbage bin. I’ve never done that before. So…careless. I’m distracted, mustn’t blame myself. It’s the daylight. It’s the daylight savings. The shift in time has muddled me up, I can never remember what day it is any more. I woke up and went out to feed the cat this morning, and there was already food in the bowl. Overflowing. Pouring out onto the concrete. I wonder how many times I’d gone to feed her. She was purring, wrapping around my legs distractedly, not interested in the mountain of kibble before me. I reach my arm into the garbage bin, all the way to the bottom until I am almost toppling in and my armpit is pressed hard against the thick plastic edge. I pull out each milk carton, each glass bottle, tin can and box with care and place them in the recycling bin. I pad back inside, cocoon myself. I roll over. I roll over and touch my hands to my face.

*

sarah

Postcards from Indonesia:

The man at the taxi desk looked at us sternly when we booked a trip to a temple, and said ‘Women can’t go in if they’re menstruating. It’s very important. It’s a holy site. You can’t enter if you’re menstruating. At all.’ And I said ‘Well, we’re not. So that’s not an issue.’

But I wish that I was. I wouldn’t go bleeding all over the floor or anything. I’d wear a tampon. And I’d just stand there, quietly defying all the men all over the world whose personal squeamishness made them put words in the mouth of their gods, calling women unclean, calling women unholy, calling women shameful and hateful and wrong.

At the front of the line to get into St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the guard told me that I couldn’t enter because my shoulders weren’t covered. I stood in my singlet top outside the huge golden buildings vomited up by the greedy wealth of the church, and looked at the guard, and breathed in, and he let me in, because he could see the rage in me and felt it wasn’t worth the trouble. Because he decided that just letting it go was easier than having to deal with a woman standing there bellowing ‘Do you honestly think that of all the problems in this sick, blighted world, of all the terror and death and disease and shocking, incomprehensible horror on this planet, that your god honestly cares about my bare shoulders? How dare you let some sex-starved bishops six hundred years ago who couldn’t keep their erections down demand that I should not be able to walk under this roof? How dare you think that your almighty God gives a fuck about the tops of my arms?’ He let me in, and it was beautiful, and I hated to think that the same men who could build a vast palace of glory like that could be so small and mean as to tell their wives and mothers and sisters that their bodies were unworthy.

Perhaps there is a temple somewhere where the holiest time to visit is when you are bleeding. Where mothers come to birth their children in the centre of a floor patterned with tightening spirals, and congregations flock to give thanks for the shit and piss and afterbirth, and where the air rings with cheers when the child gives its first cry. Where women come to laugh and cry and scream and dance, and where they are told that they are whole and grand and mystic, and where men are welcomed with open arms, because nobody deserves to be told that they cannot stand before god, ever.

*

izzy

I’m trying to breathe underwater
as if I’ve always known how to, as if
I know what to ask of my teeth and my tongue

*

sarah

I want to take a photo of the feeling of wet grass underfoot.
I want to take a photo of my stomach falling when someone hesitates on the phone.
I want to take a photo of your laugh when it starts to get a little wheeze in it.
I want to take a photo of the pain in my back teeth when ice cubes touch them.
I want to take a photo that will stop misogyny.
I want to take a photo that will disable weaponry.
I want to take a photo that will make everyone breathe deeper in the morning.
I want to take a photo that will give you an orgasm every time you look at it.
I want to take a photo of people having sex without compromising anyone’s privacy.
I want to take a photo of people I love when they’re dead without anyone thinking that’s totally fucked up.
I want to take a photo of people exploding without anyone having to die.

*

izzy

this ceiling has no cracks
but I’m lying on my back
trying to make one appear
and even though you’re near
clutching and struggling inside me
you still can’t seem to find me
cos I am distant like a sixth moon
and I’m sick of being the little spoon

*

sarah

Postcards from Indonesia:

I wonder at what point this seven year old girl in the pool at my feet will realise that she is not the favourite child. Her sister, perhaps two, is in the perfect point of toddlerhood, just verbal enough to be adorable, not nearly enough to be tedious. She squeals and laughs and shrieks with delight as her parents pass her through the water, kissing her with each turn. Big Sister is annoying. Big Sister won’t shut up. Big Sister is all ‘Okay mum, here’s the rules. On the count of three, we’re going to dunk under the water at the same time.’ And ‘Dad, you have to watch me while I jump under. I’m going to jump in and then I’m going to touch the bottom and bounce off and then you can catch me, but not before.’ And ‘If you don’t come in the pool with me right now I’m going to cry.’ Big Sister has discovered rules but not empathy for parents who just want to lie in the sun and sleep, or hold Little Sister, burbling and sweet, to their shoulders as her chubby child legs kick at the velvet soft water. Big Sister is so far not resentful of Little Sister. She still thinks Little Sister is pretty much the best, even though she is frustrated that Little Sister can’t jump into the pool or go underwater without dying. But one day, I think, Big Sister is going to wake up and realise that she’s not the focus any more. That, in fact, her presence is actually inhibiting her parents’ enjoyment of the little songs that Little Sister is composing, of the little laughs she makes when they toss her in the air, of her perfect two year old porcelain skin. And Big Sister is just starting to get suspicious. Swimming quietly up to her murmuring parents, straining for a second to listen, then demanding ‘Why are you whispering?’ She’s currently circling the edge of the pool like a wary stingray, watching me watch her.

*

I wake up from one of the many involuntary naps that travel induces in me to find that my mother has gone. I visually scour the pool, the banana lounges, the nearby beach and find no trace of her. Her things are still here, her glasses next to me, her towel. I wonder what it would be like if this was It, a story that began ‘One day she just vanished and I never saw her again’, and suddenly, I am Big Sister again, like I was when I was seven, jerking my head around looking for attention with rolling eyes and that particular insistent energy, that silently broadcasts a low level ‘Muuuuu-uuuuuum’ like a wifi hotspot. I am Big Sister and I am not the centre of my parents’ attention and I am remembering how to be lost and afraid.

*

izzy

glassy eyes gazing to infinity
limbs entwined and stiffening
skin soft and fine like wax
melting into one another

taxidermied lovers never die

*

sarah

I hear the crackle and pop of your sugar snap love from three suburbs away
like fireworks, blazing and raining down promises
while kids upturn faces all smeared with the dirt of the day
there’s a reason that dogs cower in kennels on New Year’s Eve
and I am running for my life with my fingers in my ears

*

izzy

fuck children
fuck peace
fuck the ten commandments
fuck neighbours
fuck resting in peace
fuck the afterlife
fuck chocolate
fuck the United Nations
fuck feeding the ducks on a cold winter’s day
fuck holding hands
fuck ice cream sticky in summer
fuck making out
fuck getting your rocks off
fuck sticking it to the man
fuck the hours spent playing on the swings in the park when you were 9
fuck everything
you stubbed your toe

*

sarah

I am reading birthing stories again. It comes in waves, this maternal intrigue, this fascination with pushing out a force of existence into the cold bright morning. I am collecting descriptions in the filing cabinet drawer in my head marked ‘babies.’ ‘It’s like pooing a watermelon’ is in there, told by a wide-eyed pregnant German teacher at high school, who can’t have been much older than I am now as she stood in the tiny classroom, mixing the dative case with girly gossip about periods as her stomach swelled. ‘There comes a point in labour when the words run out, when women stop being able to articulate their pain’, on the radio, on a hot night down Punt Road, heading home. ‘The kicking feels like someone dunking a teabag in my stomach’, just the other evening, in the swell of bodies at the North Melbourne Town Hall foyer, as bad pop blares inside. Photos of fathers crying over their partner’s shoulders as tiny hands beam up like flares dripping phosphorous ash. Another drawer, labeled The Things They Don’t Tell You About It, filled with exclamation marks – ‘You bleed for six weeks straight afterwards!’ ‘Almost everyone requires stiches!’ ‘You will shit yourself and you won’t even care!’ In the middle I am wheeling, fascinated and longing, pressing a hand to my belly and imagining a life balled inside. Then out to the margins, kicking and screaming, terrified terrified, too selfish, too young, too frightened to put all my leftover life into a new thing. Never sleeping again, bleeding money and fear and love into four limbs and a world too raw and unkind. Afraid of little lungs bawling on planes. Of SIDS. Of rolling over half-asleep and crushing it to death. Of doing it just because that’s what we do, we make a new thing to fix our broken selves, and watch it fall to pieces as life takes a pick to its heart. Oh baby-o, unborn, oh new favourite thing, oh life all in bits in the side of my belly. Oh thing that is not. Your mother is fluttering.

*

izzy

know why I chose the white radio?
true story.
what’s going on, a little scrabble action?
did he?
that’s great, good for you!
whatever, whatever, the point is you’re together playing, god bless
oh, no, just here to pick up my father.

*

sarah

Postcards from Indonesia:

The pool is quiet in the morning heat. An Australian man in his 50s (why is everyone here Australian?) heaves himself into a shallow seat in the water and rolls slowly to bake his stomach. The hair on his shoulders looks like wings. A woman steps up, child in hand, takes a photo on her iPad and he looks up. ‘Oh, I’m not taking a photo of you!’ she says. ‘Ah, it’s alright’, he says jovially. ‘I’m a beached whale here.’ He splashes water onto his gut. ‘Just gotta keep tipping water on me.’ The bartender at the swim-up bar nestles between bottles of bourbon and rum and scribbles furiously in a notepad. He is probably tallying yesterday’s sales, or ordering more mixer, but I hope he is writing a poem for a lover. Swim up verse. Poolside poetry. A beer and a quatrain for 50,000 rupiah. More waddling baked Australian seniors stroll past, clutching folded notes, in a country where we are all millionaires.

*

izzy

I’m on the phone to Centrelink, and I need to poo. I’m not sure what the politics of the situation are. They called me. I made an appointment time online, and they called me. I laughed to myself sitting by the landline phone. Centrelink my lover, Centrelink my beau. I’m on hold, trying to calculate whether or not I could feasibly poo in time before the woman gets back on the line. She seems lovely. That feels like an anomalous experience, to speak to someone so engaging and lovely when all they do all day is talk to people looking for help. Maybe that is rewarding. I hope she finds it rewarding. She seems so lovely. I know if I drop the call and ring back, I’ll have to wait in a queue for ages. I might even have to wait forever to get another appointment. Surely people go to the toilet when they are on the phone to Centrelink all the time. That mustn’t be pleasant to deal with. I don’t want to be one of those people. I consider whether I could leave the bathroom door open to minimise the acoustic differences. Whether I have enough control to avoid embarrassing noises. Whether she’d ever know if I waited til I was off the phone to flush. “Are you there?” “Yes, hello! Still here.”

*

sarah

Postcards from Indonesia:

We step out of Denpasar airport, out of the long hot queue full of people wearing faces of quiet desperation, out of the stern faced man at Immigration who asks if my mother is my grandmother and then apologises profusely, laughing, out of the bag graveyard and into the air. The day smells of clove cigarettes, incense and gasoline, and I breathe in deep. It feels familiar, and I remember the first time I was here. Ten, maybe? Bold and all-knowing in peaked caps and books, bossing my brother about and feeling unsettled by the smell of shit in the air. I scrawl an equation: comfort equals unfamiliarity plus time.

*

izzy

She feels good about the fact she can fight. It’s like the number one best thing she knows how to do and it makes her untouchable. She can run, too – really fast, but she thinks when the time comes, she’d prefer to fight. The streets at night are an invitation as well as a threat. Whatever she’s wearing is a threat and an invitation. Fists like thorny rosebuds waiting to bloom.

*

sarah

I am practicing smiling like a shark
deadening my eyes, growing my pupils
black and fat and matte
I am circling smaller and smaller
around a coin on the floor
getting the turns tucked in tight
I am holding my breath in the bath
my neck muscles twitch
ready to let the gills split the skin

*

izzy

there’s a cutout of a mountain where my face used to be
it was certainly the best option, in my opinion

maybe it wouldn’t objectively be the best option ever, like
the best option for face replacement surgery anyone’s ever had
but it works for me

I feel like an alpine dream.

*

sarah

They flick the switch on the dimmers and they kick into life, that low whine-hum of the lights warming up, of the electricity settling in the grid. I bend double, cycle my spine down to the floor, clicking my knees into place, unhinging my shoulders and letting the fluid snake down my arms. I am heavier here, older, achier. I stoke the fires in my belly and tuck a little lighter fluid behind my teeth, ready to bite down and let it loose. The ceiling plays static, bouncing from speaker to speaker with ping pong precision. I close my eyes like red velvet curtains and peer through the cracks at the stage. Footsteps shuffle outside, the herding stupid scrapes of too many people in too small a space. I breathe in deep, breathe in power and fear and spiny black words and I won’t breathe out til the applause hits the wall behind me and bounces back off, and I am full of its echo and myself again.

*