The Night Is Yours Alone

Don't you remember back when we were young and our loves were young. When we had sleepovers and sang about everybody hurting. And now we are older and we've been hurt, some still hurting. We believe those words now, more than we believe in a love that lasts forever. And what I never told you was that when I sang those words I was that person hurting, and what you don't know now is that I'm still hurting, and the nights are mine alone.

What I'm telling you now is that I've had enough and I'm waiting for you to tell me it will be alright. But you won't tell me. You won't tell me anything. So I guess I'll just sing those words to myself now that we're older and now that we've realised love won't last forever.

I thought you believed in them too. I thought you were the one who would be there to tell me. But you are hurting in your own way now. I feel that if I knew you sooner, or if I knew you different, then this would all be okay and we could go back to our sleepovers and young loves and choose a different song to sing. But we can't, so we have to sing this song about everybody who hurts, but let's not make it a competition, I know all the hurt people and I've hurt enough to sing it straight.

I always begged for someone to sing this song with me, so we could hurt together, if only I knew you then, we could have sang it together. We could sing it straight because we both know what hurt is and we've hurt enough to keep singing that song until we no longer believe in anything but pain.

The Last Plane Out Of Sydney

I looked at my father and tried to find the parts of him that were like me. We had the same nose and the same sense of humour, but that's all I could find. He told me he was going away and that made me think of the times when I was younger when he would tell me he was moving to another city. He'd show me the city on a map, like knowing where he was going would somehow make it easier because there was only a ten centimetre line separating us.

I remember those times I'd try not to be emotional, because I never knew him anyway, so what difference did ten centimetres make? But then I'd go to bed and cry myself to sleep, because I didn't know him, and now I never would. He's only a few centimetres away now but I still cry when he says he's leaving because in twelve years, nothing has changed.

I have all these songs that make me think of him. Khe Sanh by Cold Chisel is my favourite. I was in the car with mum and dad one night when I was only young, but old enough to remember songs and we were driving him to the airport, mum was doing him a favour since he didn't have a car anymore. We were driving past the planes taking off and Khe Sanh was playing on the radio and I was in the backseat with tears in my eyes because the last plane out of Sydney was almost gone and my dad was getting on it.

So I look at my dad and wonder what it's like to be a dad, and if he ever wished he was like other dads, or maybe that I was like other daughters. Because I don't know anyone like us. Atleast I know there are two things that will always keep us together, our noses and our sense of humour.

All The Small Things

She kissed me on the stairs and all I could think of was that I tasted like garlic and onion and meat. Meat. The stairs reminded me of the girl I liked when I was 12. She was my brother's girlfriend though, so I guess that complicated things. I tasted like garlic and onion and meat and she had just kissed me on the stairs. But all I could think of was my brother's girlfriend who I liked when I was 12.

I smelt like flowers and wasn't that strange? Flowers are feminine I guess, but she probably didn't notice that when she kissed me. Because I tasted weird and I was thinking about my brother's girlfriend and she was kissing me and I was going up the stairs and she was going down them.

And all I could think of was how I wished that I tasted sweet when she kissed me and how this wasn't the right time and I'd wished that she'd kiss me again, somewhere else when I tasted as good as I smelt and when I wasn't thinking about my brother's girlfriend and when she wasn't going down the stairs and me going up them.

I'm Only Pretty Sure That I Can't Take Anymore

So you go and live your life, you go and forget about me, go and replace me with someone similar, tell yourself that you are doing the right thing for all of us. You go and do what's good for you, because what's good for me stopped being good a long time ago.

I've had this dulling pain in my stomach for the last seven days and I think it is the pain of losing slowly, it's not sharp and intrusive but it's always there, when I wake up, when I think about you. This dulling pain heightens when I see you, when I think about seeing you, it becomes sharp and intrusive because I realise it is easier to hate you than to love you.

And so that's what I do, I hate instead of love and all the residual feelings of sorrow and loneliness are now replaced by an urgent angst, I am punching the brick wall now instead of crashing into it, slowly, sadly.

So you go and do what's good for you. You go and worry about yourself and don't you worry about me because I've decided to hate. You are going now with the pieces of my life that I handed to you, the pieces I told you to throw away.

So go and live your life and I'll live mine. I'll forget about you and the pain will pass.

You go and climb over those brick walls, and maybe you'll say hi to me as I crash into them, as my fists crash into them, as my heart crashes and my mind takes control.

Go and do what's good for you because I know you will. Forget this mess and just remember that you left a mark on me. So go and live your life, that's what I'm supposed to do right? Now that you are gone, or now that you are going, you did everything I said and now I hate you for it, because this dulling pain won't leave me and neither will my feelings.

I wonder how it's going to be when you don't know me anymore?

It's like you are removing all traces of yourself from my view, from my life. It's like you are scared. It's like you are being overly cautious. It's like you think I'm a danger to you. It's like you are gone.

So you go and live your life, you go and forget about me, go and replace me with someone similar, tell yourself that you are doing the right thing for all of us. And what happens when you do? You say we don't forget, but then what? If we don't forget then are we destined to fall?

In My Mind I Still Need A Place To Go

Clementine is the city that sits in the corner and never begs to be accepted into the middle. It is most fascinating when unoccupied, or when there is just one person, trying to find their way, asking what gives voice to mercy. Is it the stranger who leaves hope behind, because they are finished with it, because they believe you need it more. Because they know you are going home to no one and you are still searching for something to make it all worthwhile. Or is mercy the things you don't say, the words you forget when it means the most.

Visiting Clementine is like looking for hope in the tiny uninflected patch of sky that covers the universe. It is thinking of every city that came before it and realising it's like nothing you've ever seen. It is ignoring the green rolling hills and the tangerine sky and admitting that you are lost. That you've been lost a long time and you've come for forgiveness, you've come to find it in Clementine.

The shaded buildings hide the sun in Clementine. It is dark so you can find your way, not because you have lost it. Leaving Clementine is like sitting on the edge of the world and not caring whether you fall or fly, because there is nothing at the edge, it's all behind you now, back in Clementine where it all began. It is questioning what it all meant, because surely it meant something. It is forgiveness and accepting what's been left for you, because for as long as you can remember it's always felt like nothing.

Clementine is the city that reminds you of the girl you fell in love with, the one you left behind. The girl you've spent the rest of your life looking for.

The Spaces Between

I was so prepared for this to fall gracefully from my mind that I got caught in the space between falling and forgetting. So instead of this falling gracefully, it has stumbled, just like me. Unable to land on anything solid, unable to grasp anything real again.

Living Room

We are all voyeurs. We look into others lives with accidental intention and try to refrain from making comment, from correcting the misplaced apostrophes. Accidental intention cannot be said of my neighbour however.

I believe a neighbour is anyone who noses their way into your life, whether it be, asking what you are cooking for dinner, in the hopes that it might appear on their doorstep, or watching you from their windows with a great deal of intention. To me, a neighbour is not the person who lives in the apartment next door, the unnamed antagonist who keeps me up at night, going insane over their bad taste in music. Think: the circus meets Pavarotti. There is never talking or shuffling footsteps, but always muffled artificiality, seeping through the walls and encasing my bed in stone, in noisy, badly played stone.

But back to my neighbour, the one who has scrawled ‘my windows look into your living room’ in black marker on their window. There may be two footpaths, a four lane road, a thousand cars, several flights of stairs and our whole lives separating us, but this neighbour feels inherently close to me, to my life. They are in the living room of my mind. Always, just waiting, sipping a quiet tea while I’m out back going mad over caffeine. They are just sitting, waiting.

I can’t recall if the writing had been there since I’d moved in, or if it was newly written, and in my own secret pain I’d failed to notice. My neighbour watches as I slip into another narcoleptic state on the couch. I don’t actually own a couch, or the traditional meaning of the word. What I own is chairs, many chairs. Chairs that form in the shape of a couch but never mimic the indulgent comfort. I’d learned to live with this, told myself it was only what I deserved.

My neighbour watches me as I sit on the floor with the blinds flung together, drawn open, knees to my chest, sobbing because I had just let everything go for the second time in my life and it didn’t feel good like it did the first. They watched me as I began to wonder why. The person in the apartment next door did not see this, nor did they hear it. But my neighbour sees everything; they live my life with me through four panes of glass. They watch me sit on the balcony on my vintage bicycle, eyes shut, speeding blindly through the streets, ringing the bell madly and knocking people down like they were empty rubbish bins. They understand why I do this on the balcony and not the street. Because the street is full of terrible people like the person who lives next door, listening to circus opera.

Me and my neighbour, we understand that the city is not brimming with life, full of people surging through its veins. We understand that this is a desert we live in, that it is only as real as we let ourselves believe, and that at any given moment this desert will become imaginary, and we will be separated from one another forever.

So when those words scrawled on the window begin to make me feel uneasy, I just remind myself, this person, this person is my neighbour. My neighbour understands me, understands why I’m alone all the time, why I’ll never leave the house again, and why no one will ever come to my door. My neighbour understands because they wait for me in the living room of my mind, every night, just waiting. Waiting for me.