SPREAD
Fiction. Published in n-SCRIBE 12, 2017.
Highly Commended, Darebin Mayor’s Writing Awards.
The biggest change wasn’t the language – the garbled wide syllables she had to force into sentences inside her head. Nor the suddenness of being foreign, of drawing the attention of eyes she used to stare at, at home.
It was the space. On suburban trains, rattling through tunnels and pressed in against hot, tired humans (the sweat taking on some delicate new tang – old perfume; new lover) – there it was almost normal. But the first time she took a train out – really out, to where the trees fell away to scrub and huge trucks bawled their bitumen lullabies – that was where it hit. She walked, shoes salted in dust, until the horizon ran flat in all directions. And she felt herself spread. Diluted, somehow, trying to fill the space, trying to touch the sky. She couldn’t think. Thoughts lazed across kilometres, missed her brain on the circuit back home and shot out into infinity. She felt terribly, terrifyingly light. Like a sugar low that reached out from her body and into everything. She shook. She stayed until the sun set, blood raking everything, light leaping off the edge of the world, and when the night came she wept.
Back in her apartment, she kissed the walls, every one. She thanked the ceiling with a hand to her heart and cheeks shining. That night, she dreamed of dying, woke choked and tacky-skinned. Cried out names that could not hear her, even on a wind that screamed. The dawn purred in through the catflap blinds.
At the market, hefting armfuls of greens, her fingers grazed the dirt caught in the leaves. Some shape in her stomach shifted. She licked her fingers, raked earth across her tongue, bit down. Her teeth caught the grit. The sound was loud enough to almost be pain. Later, chopping the vegetables, she did not wash them. The dirt like pepper. Each mouthful shrieked.
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Full piece in n-SCRIBE 12.