six; knots in time

the first time i ran into her, i was carrying my shopping home and i didn’t really notice until it was too late. it was getting dark and my eyes lingered where they never had before and her face was imprinted on me for the weeks to come. i couldn’t blink without her face staring at me, like i was a poison in her very veins. it set me on fire, bouncing back between my bones like a game i didn’t want to play in the first place. but that feeling stuck with me, stuck inside of me.

my fingers were bouncing at the tip of who she was. where i had seen her face before, where i knew her dark eyes, and her slanted lips from – who was she, and where did she come from?

i didn’t sleep for three days, and my caffeine fuelled body hallucinated bugs all over the walls, and i was crying because i couldn’t get the washing machine to work – and i remembered. i remembered her face and i stood up straight. she was me, she was me but she was so far advanced – so far forward that her hair no longer frayed at the ends where i bleached it blonde when i was twenty two. she had all the buttons on her coat, and she had perfectly manicured nails. she was pulled together like a toy stitched at it’s seams and pulled into another universe.

i didn’t see her for a few years then, as i continued living a life i was unsure about, steady shaky stances and cowardly corners all turned into a life i was sure i had no way of escaping. i was locked here, as who i am with no escape.

i saw her on a train that day. i was reading a book, and so was she, but her eyes didn’t slip over half the page like mine did – they were steady and she peered through her glasses like she could actually finally see – like everything before her was stretched into perfection, like a linear line of wonder. she didn’t look up at me, she probably never would because i was pushed so far below her, i wouldn’t even show up on the radar that scanned her lungs, but i felt it in mine.

i saw her once more, before the final time. and i was sitting in a coffee shop, and she stood between me and a boy who had been flashing his soul-winning smile at me across a latte and she wandered through like she owned the place. she apologized, with a voice that i recognized from my own body and i was too shocked to reply. but still, her eyes glazed over me and i felt a cold wind pass through me, as two knots in time overlapped – as they slipped past each other and touched fingers so suggestively that i still shudder. she was wearing a pencil skirt and was holding a laptop bag across her shoulder and her lips were golden red and she was perfect. she was everything i strove towards, and could never envision – personified and stripped bare. i looked back at my coffee, and back at the boy and i almost forgot about her, suddenly overwhelmed.

the last time was the strangest. i stepped from the shower. i could hear the hum of the tv in the background and there was too much steam to breathe deeply but happiness spread through my veins like i was driven by it. i walked to the mirror and let the steam evaporate off it’s surface and there she was. i could feel my body contracting, as though my memory had been removed by a snake. it could never be possible, any of this – all of this. i was a shell of what i once was, but even more of a shadow of what i could become, and i was messy and broken and limp and staring right back into my own eyes. i felt the knots that had once overlapped, fall together, in place.

five; harris

(better late than never, and better never than dead)
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i’d brought their coffee out with a smile on my lips that plagued my day. there were tables full of people, of mothers gossiping, of men in suits and women with their minds shuffling papers they knew they had to write. there were misfits and lovers and friends with awkward half-hearted waves of greeting. and i was standing with an off-white apron tied around my hearty waist, balancing as many double-shot-skim-milk-extra-hot-lattes as i could in my over encumbered arms. i whittled my day away, watching eyes glaze over me, grunting appreciation with my hard work, growing ever more anxious and annoyed with every second the clock ticked.

it had taken me a moment, then, to realize when he walked in. his hair was a tousled blonde mess, and he rubbed his gloved hands together, as he tried to shake the cold out of his skin – welcoming the warmth of our overfilled, hideaway coffee house. his eyes had scanned the room, subtly – almost invisibly, until he located me, stacking shelves with a new delivery of coffee beans.

hey his voice was casual. he didn’t mean to bump into me, it was coincidence really, he probably had never picked up on the fact that i was here every tuesday between nine and ten.

oh hey harris, i had replied.

we talked in small sentences of kind words and appreciation while i finished my job. we bumbled and mumbled while i made his large hazelnut cappuccino – politely avoiding the sparks that feasted between our silhouettes.

would you, maybe, when you finish one day, maybe, come back to my house, he stumbled, i’ve got some books i’m pretty sure you’d be very interested in.

and i was sure he did. we’d spoken every few days for months now, a very bleak green light, shimmering at the end of my dock.

i’d agreed, of course. i’m sure that’s what i had been waiting for – isn’t that always the way, i would never have admitted it, but something about his nonchalance and love of greek poetry really spoke to my inner clockwork.

we giggled as we left the coffee shop a few hours later. pulling our coats over our small frames, forever shrunken by the large city around us. we were chatting with ease, flying through conversation with brief moments of sullen spurs as our hands bumped in our wandering gait. and finally we found a front door, painted blue, tucked between a chinese restaurant and a seven-eleven.

we walked in, and climbed over a half-built model train set, and a bootleg copy of anchor man and finally reached his lounge-room. he lived alone, in a single bedroom, very small unit. very small. small enough to see every nook and every cranny, and to see every photo that was plastered to the walls of his house, like an open investigation of a crime scene. i spotted myself between a young man with a tattoo of a tiger on his arm, and a middle-aged woman, driving a van. i thought very clearly well this is odd – as he pulled a chloroform rag across my face.