izzy

this is my face when I’m just about to sneeze,
sitting on the floor of my room in the rathdowne street sharehouse I shared with an absentee, a pothead lawyer and a shut-in that reeked of weed and shook with blazing video-game guns
sitting on the floor of my room with my back against the door

this is my face looking up into the glare of the sun on the beach

this is my face when we were robbed in the debating grand final in year 11
and you agreed, we were robbed

this is my face after the first public showing of the first real, full-length play I wrote

this is my face when I realised that you hadn’t actually planned an ending or decided who the murderer was at my 13th birthday murder mystery party

this is my face after I asked you to leave when Mum was overseas
and you weren’t looking after us, we were looking after you

this is my face when you did a comedy sketch with our chocolate Easter rabbits for an hour before letting us eat them

this is my face when you told us the blair witch was in the isolated bush around the shack, then switched the torch off in the pitch dark and bolted off leaving my and Gree behind

this is my face when you told me the story of how you met Mum

this is my face when I stubbed my toe and you put your big hand around my foot and squeezed and squeezed to make it better

this is my face when you put on the Beatles number 1 CD again
and again
and again
until the generator died and we didn’t have any lights left

this is my face when I couldn’t stop laughing at your ridiculous lanky rock dance moves, the air guitar, the Elvis hip swing

this is my face, and even though it doesn’t really look like yours, sometimes I can see you in it.

*

sarah

The trains scrape across the tracks like possums screaming
The possums scream a little, just to join in
But their hearts aren’t in it
They’re too busy staring desperately at the sky, looking for the stars
Rubbing their muddy eyes, lost at sea while the gulls cackle and wheel
Remembering the constellations their mothers taught them
Big fat old possum, mister ringtail, the tree bark trail
Gone foggy now, gone quiet up there
Floating away in the big dome sky
Off to the next world, where they’re needed more and better

*

izzy

what does theatre mean to you?
being present.

have you ever wanted to die?
yes.

what does calmness feel like to you?
the bush and the sea.
I feel like I am at my calmest in the bush.
it’s a place to be still, a place to be quiet, a place to let go of –
oh, wait –
in Australia ‘bush’ also means the outdoors, forest, wilderness,
but I guess either one works.

what was your first impression of me?
you are bright.

why are you doing this?
I don’t know.

why are you doing this?
I wanted people to have a chance to be close to a stranger.

why are you doing this?
I want to be close to people.

when’s the right time to move in with a partner?
when you’re ready.
when you want to.
there are no hard and fast rules – it’s all bullshit.
either it feels right, or it doesn’t.
screw timelines.

should I move overseas?
yes.
take your new husband with you,
this is the greatest adventure.
you don’t have to be settled yet.
you can be each other’s portable homes.

should I quit my job?
yes.
if it’s not making you happy,
if it’s making you unhappy,
if you have the opportunity to do better
of course.
the city you love will always be there
to come home to if it doesn’t work out.

what is the biggest feeling you’ve ever felt?
the ocean falling on me.
when he died.

what is the hardest question someone asked you?
I was going to say ‘have you ever wanted to die’
but actually I think it was ‘do you really think people care if you tell the truth?’

*

sarah

sitting on the ground with the cigarette butts old chip packets balls of spit
I am ploughing through a tub of bad cold pasta and I am terrified
terrified of absolutely nothing, which is the worst thing to be terrified of
the only thing to fear is fear itself but fear is pretty fucking scary

*

izzy

this is the meat, tender and raw
this is the bone cracking

this is the skin lifting
this is the hair on the skin rising up

this is the tendon slackening
this is the fat dripping to the floor

*

sarah

we laughed, and in the laughter was the niggling panic
of knowing that our laughing would soon come to an end
we laughed the way that children cry –
all at once, in case they get distracted
and have to stop before they’re through
we laughed like socialites
pouring the champagne down the drain
before it goes flat and listless
laughing madly, before we forgot it all
and with it, all the heat of the room
and the breath of strangers
and the leaping hearts of a hundred chests
banging hard against their windows
we laughed for our old days, sitting on carpets
in tattered pyjamas, clutching at toys
mouthing the jokes we didn’t understand
and shining with bubblegum joy
we laughed for the cinemas and VHS tapes
worn down from rewinding in battered machines
we laughed so our brains would send clunky telegrams
with conflated descriptions of the times that we loved

*

izzy

01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01110011 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 00001101 00001010 01101100 01100001 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110010 01100001 01100011 01110100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01101101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101010 01100101 01110100 01110000 01100001 01100011 01101011 01110011 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01100101 01100101 01110100 00101110 00101110 00101110 00001101 00001010 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100111 01110101 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100101 01101101 01101111 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01111001 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111

*

sarah

The train of being asleeps and being awakes chugs on by
And the crockery rattles on the corners
The theatre lights fall on his glasses like stars
I am holding hands with a stranger
I am singing about dying
I am seventeen thousand kilometres from home

*

izzy

my face is out of control at the moment
it’s gone AWOL, it’s throwing shapes all over the place
it made new friends when I wasn’t looking
my face is up shit creek without a paddle
but it’s on the party boat, so paddles are useless here anyway
if your name is your fate, then your face is your mate

*

sarah

Overheard from a phone conversation of a girl on the Megabus from London to Edinburgh:
So, are you like, boyfriend and girlfriend now then?
Did you stay at his, then? How was that, you know, with the dog?
Have you told your mum about him yet?
Well, he is ginger.
Ginger baaaaaaabies.
Yeah, I get it, when you don’t want to make it – having fun – yeah, I’m in something a bit like that actually.
Yeah, I went to her wedding, and she looked –
Like, she looked as though she’d just turned up and put lipstick on, you know?
She probably forgot it was her wedding. She was out, and then she woke up, and just had to –
Yeah, I could stay with Tim, but I don’t really fancy sharing a bed with Tim.
Or, actually, maybe Tim –

*

izzy

this is a stolen story called ‘the jellybean beach’, as dictated to me by Jordan. Adams. Prosser.

once there was a beach but unlike most normal beaches, instead of sand it was only jellybeans as far as the eye could see. Green ones, blue ones, pink ones, but mostly black ones because they’re the ones that nobody likes (which I personally never understood because everyone seems to like liquorice just fine).

A man stood on the beach and watched the waves rolling up towards his ankles and when he looked down, he could not tell where his feet ended and where the beach began. For this man had often been teased, goaded, derided, since a very early age that his toes looked quite a lot like jellybeans. It is also worth noting that the man had travelled very far to see the famous jellybean beach, and consequently he was hungry. Now although there were signs at every entrance strictly forbidding the consumption of the naturally occurring jellybeans on the beach, the man required sustenance for he had not eaten in days and he felt like a shell of his former self, such was the arduousness and intensity of his pilgrimage.

Looking down now, dazed, famished, with the echoes of teenage bullies ricocheting throughout his brain and the pangs of insidious hunger echoing within his abdomen, the man bent over as far as he could and within the space of 30 seconds had lovingly consumed all of his own toes.

THE END.

*

sarah

Black presses against the windows of the ferry, whose bowels grumble and tetch seven floors below. Four hundred people slump where they sit, faces pressed to the linoleum tabletops, parents touching heads with children, lovers limp and waxy together. I think of Jonestown, wonder how long it would take the staff to realise their cargo was all dead
And then the cliffs of Dover ooze out of the blue washed morning and the dead wake up, rub their eyes and sit quiet and solemn as the port rolls in.

*

izzy

first time I’ve ever seen ticket inspectors on the Paris métro
and they’re not even giving me a second glance
in this almost-empty carriage they check everyone
but me
I think I must look French, I must look like I couldn’t be a fare evader with my
cropped hair
striped shirt
red lipstick
baguette
and a bag rattling with red wine for the riverbanks
I must look French with my
striped shirt
cropped hair
red lipstick
white skin.

*

sarah

they say that animals know more than we do
they can sense things we can’t
dogs can smell cancer, birds sing for the dead
rats will run when the going gets tough
well, this cat is hunched under the bed, spitting and moaning
making that horrid human groaning that sounds like ‘no’ and tensed like a cobra
and I wonder what the fuck it is that I don’t know about
and whether it’s me, or her, or us both

*

izzy

Je trouve moi-même à Paris avec la même problème, que je ne peux pas parler bien en Français. Alors, je veux pratiquer la conjugaison et attempter de rappeler les petits mots que j’ai oublié. Je ne sais pas si ceci là m’aider.

*

sarah

A cloud ridged like a Portuguese man-o-war makes its stately way across the sky as the land bubbles away beneath it
the children shriek, scatter from their parents
screaming at them to run
mum and dad chuckle at their chubby-faced spawn
and press another slice of brie into their wet-wiped fingers
they never see the tentacles come drifting in
cruel and soft as rain

*

izzy

A: I’m a shell of a man today
B: I love that every time we see you guys, you’re wearing the same thing
C: we like wearing the same thing, we love it, we always coordinate in the morning
B: here, we can add to it
A: I left myself at home
B: with the gift of matching gifts
A: I don’t know who I am, or if I was ever even my own person

*

sarah

We get on the train. I am pissed off, so we don’t buy a ticket. ‘Fuck it’, I say, ‘they won’t even check.’ We slip across the border into France and the train slows and dark-dyed white men with police eyes scatter onto the train like ants. We get off, of course. Heft our backpacks up and put on our ‘Oh yes, this is our spot, beautiful Menton’ faces. We stand at the ticket machine at the station pretending we didn’t just get off the train. The police lug two black men off, sit them on a bench, say ‘Beautiful day!’ in jaunty Gallic accents. We walk outside the station and walk back in, speak to the woman behind the glass, say ‘Grazie’ and ‘Si’ instead of ‘Merci’ and ‘Oui.’ We don’t need tickets. We never did. We sit at the opposite end of the platform, carefully away from the milling police and the quiet-faced black men. We stare at the sun and the mountains and marvel that people actually wake up here every morning and put on police uniforms and police belts, one of which now presents itself in front of our eyes. We look up and the man is kind-faced and I can’t stop looking at his gun. He asks us who we are, he tells us about his son in New Zealand, he teaches us to count to ten in French. His eyes sparkle and I think he will be a great Santa when he gets older. Our laughter tinkles like windchimes in the morning heat. The next train arcs into view and his face crisps up, he bids us adieu, and as we step up onto the carriage, we see more black men being pulled off to sit on benches in the puddles of gorgeous European sun.

*

izzy

Caroline has been sitting in the same chair in the same café table for nigh on six years now. Tucked into the corner in a little alcove, just at the point with the highest concentration of the smell of coffee grinds and baking bread, it is warm here, and dark. A lamp made from an old gramophone spills honey light over her hands as she works, kneading bread or fashioning wire and silk ribbon roses for the table centrepieces. Highlights of the day include the opening bass chords of walk on the wild side (although the inevitably turn into that song that sampled Lou – it’s too long since it has been fashionable to play Revolver in café culture), a bloody mary at midday and the smell of scones and butter. Caroline has been sitting at the same chair in the same café and thank god they’ve made her useful because she hasn’t moved an inch in six years, and doesn’t plan on it any time soon.

*

sarah

In the dawning days, when the air was thick with pyroclastic rain, the pigeons were kings.
Strutting. Preening. Nesting the eggs of the world into musky hatching, to birth the streams and the chattering stones. Then, they dined on diamonds and fought the eagles and won (the chaos of beginnings are no times for the clear-sighted). They dyed their legs with the blood of the fallen and rolled their fine feathers in garments of ash and their cries pierced all of the rumbling thunder of night.

*