2

She placed the keys in the bowl on the kitchen bench. The place for keys. Everything in it's place Neat stale air. She breathed. There was a time when she would have opened the window, but she had lost that battle to a sudden gust of wind and a broken glass. She turned the air conditioning up a notch thinking about open faced helmets, drops of rain hitting her eyeballs, the scent of night jasmine. Breathing in static dryness and artificial chill.

She could smell him on her.

She moved through the loungeroom and there was evidence of her passing, her bag dropped to the ground and forgotten in an instant, her helmet perched on the table, her gloves on the couch The jacket draped over the bench framing the kitchenette. It wa a regular complaint, her shedding. There were pieces of her everywhere, abandoned, unnoticed even at his place there would be something, old bus tickets fallen from her bag, a pen that she had used to write his home phone number down. The envalope on which she had written his number. (She should have folded it back into her pocket or the zip pocket of her bag) A tampon wrapped in toilet paper and secreted in the very bottm of this kitchen bin. Her mark on his place. Her address, glaring from the window of the envalope dropped onto the floor beside his bed. Pieces of herself.

She took her knickers off and held them in her hands staring at the crotch, expecting blood. She had a sudden flash of that first time in high school and almost laughed. This new first thing. Despite the last days of her period, despite the idea of something done for the first time, it had not drawn blood. No one hurt then, which was a relief.

1

The bike was all rust. Rust spreading like algae on the tank. Rust on the mirrors and on the handlebars. Thick dusty doilies of it. The battery would be worse than flat, dead. Her dead motorcycle. She squeezed the car in next to it, illuminating it with her headlights and she sat like that engine off, the shadow of it stretching out across the road. She felt it in her body, suddenly, the lean of a corner, that particular ache in her forearms from holding the throttle at its furthest extension for hours, days. All the open road. She remembered a moment when the sunset took her by surprise and she had to pull over, flip her visor up and breathe in the change of season. Just an ordinary day but this moment bedded down in memory like it was her times tables or a recipe for pancakes.

She turned off the headlights and the motorcycle retreated into darkness. She could see the vague outline of it but it might be anything.

The inside of the car was safe and warm and ordinary. She sat in it for what felt like a long time. She could smell the boy on her. Saliva. His spit on her face and her neck and her breasts. She would have to have a shower before bed. Bed. And the glimmer of dawn beginning to touch the tops of cars, the faint outline of her own, decaying bike.

She breathed in the chemical car smell and watched the morning rising over her disused motorcycle.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the rear view mirror, dry-eyed but with an ache that was a fissure, irreparably large.

She slipped the keys from the ignition and she eased herself out of her car. Her husband's car. He had chosen it, paid for it, driven it home. His car then. She locked it and with dawn in her mouth tasting slightly metallic, she walked into the lobby and took the lift to the eighth floor to her own flat, home, only not it felt like somewhere else.

girl

she is a girl. This changes everything. months away from it and here is the answer. she is a girl and she is me. Not me now but me as I will be when I spend time with her. The she that I would have wanted to be.

linseed

I have no emotional energy for him right now. He needs something from me. He needs me to keep him moving forward by slow increments. He needs me to put him in the world and he is resisting me at every turn. He wants me to find a time when it will just be him and me in a house at the beach where I can find his voice and I will do this sometime, but I have no time for it now. I get nothing back. I need input. I need to be filled up with all of the emotions that have washed pale in me. I cling to the last little scrap of passion but even this may be taken. I can't read. I long for images. I flick through big thick books with glossy prints but I want the smell of oil paint. I want the taste of linseed oil on my fingers. After this thing called christmas I will clear a small corner of my head for this book, but until then I will paint.

with his one hand

with his one hand Evan can turn the wheel, adjust it just a little at a time, negotiating the highways almost imperceptable curve to the right. His body remembers this. Open road, the easy lean back in the drivers seat. The sound of the radio turned down too low to hear anything but a rattle of distant voices. Pared back. That is what he likes about driving, this cut down to nothing but a road and a view that changes just to keep things interesting, and the clamour of this thoughts relaxing into the room that the open road has made for them.

There is a pedal fitted to the accelerator that makes it just a small stretch for the break. He tests it now, bunny-hopping a little and the thing works fine. He is safe. Or not. It makes no difference. He might have died and that was fine. He is alive and that is fine too. He turns the radio up, letting the wheel slip free, feeling the car drag slightly towards the shoulder as he does so. There is a roar of laughter and a chatter of voices, too muddled together for him to untangle one from another. It barely matters. They are happy, they are laughing, everything is fine.

always time for art

so if I have no head space for words I will always have time for art. These pictures leaped out of the internet and shouted to become useful to my brain book. Here's what they wordlessly say to me...

when will I get time for this blog?

2009 is looking better...