1

2

You’re nailed to your bed by spikes. Your brain gives itself a lobotomy. You move occasionally, trying to scratch your itches, to relieve your cracked spine, but the movements are slight and feeble, fishlike. You dream of fountains and cliff faces. Turning to the wall you say –

How nineteenth

century .

The hours slip by. You hardly feel them. The hold on your wrists and legs lessens. You thirst. The sun moves beyond the curtain.

3 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

S L E E P -L E S SThird day.

She plays solitaire, the cards heavy as sheet metal. The Kings glance at her sideways with utmost disinterest, but the Queens are full of animosity, the scepters they hold are telescopes to see into all of her secrets. They are minute, but they unnerve her. She leaves her hand of cards unplayed and ventures to the apartment window. Her garden, the communal garden, is a crater of graves, earth left rough and airy like egg whites beaten into peaks for me-ringue. She presses her hand to the glass. Where are your neigh-bours?

Her lover comes home with a slaughtered lamb, blood on his pale beard. She takes it into the kitchen and strips the animal of its skin. “This will be useful,” she tells it, the aching sore of it, an abominable presence on her pristine countertop. She cries over its split veins. Her tears salt the meat and when she roasts it in the oven, her tears baste the joint, and it is a meal fit for a king, a fact which her lover tells her, again and again.

Fourth day. She attempts to read an academic medical jour-

11

nal. The words march across the page like advancing armies, their motives for war inscrutable. She is infected with terrible diseases. Sitting very still, she can feel the workings of her body boil in a tumult, gears shifting and catching. Her heart opens and shuts like an anemone. It is poisonous to touch.

The neighbours are all gone. She envies them their freedom; placed end to end they travel the world with a steady locomo-tion, breathing steam. The apartments beneath her apartment are empty caverns. She lie on the floor and feel their silence fuse with her bones. Her lover finds her this way. Muffled, as though by leagues of water, she hears him say, “What are you doing on the floor? What are you doing?”

Fifth day. You are, she is, we are buried alive. She cannot get out of bed, the weight of the atmosphere pinning her down, pressing her lungs into the back of her rib cage. She breathes in staccato, when she breathes at all.

Sixth day.

She rises, weightless. Her footsteps on the carpet are gold leaf. Her eyes are two hanging lanterns. Her lover is crying in the kitchen, but she sees bronze light streaming from the pulse points at his wrists and throat, sunlight, caressing the dimensions of him. Her sight passes backwards along the dendrochronology of time and forwards, in an ever-expanding arc. She goes to the window.

The landscape of equidistant chestnut trees and well-maintained lawns is gone, replaced instead with forests that roar upwards towards the sky like waterfalls flowing backwards. Moss shifts and coils over the glass, growing and dying and growing. Down below, dinosaurs walk side-by-side with ice-hoofed cari-bou, dread-headed bison. A centrosaurus kisses bright dew from a snow leopard’s nose.

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13

14

15

16

17

TE

LL

ME

EX

AC

TLY

WH

AT Y

OU

SAW

AN

D W

HAT

YO

U T

HIN

K IT

ME

AN

S

But

no,

they

left

the

light

s bu

rnin

g un

til 4

in th

e m

orni

ng. Y

ou k

now

this

bec

ause

you

st

ood

in th

e da

rk o

f yo

ur k

itche

n, th

e lig

ht c

reep

ing

up th

roug

h yo

ur g

arde

n bu

t nev

er

mak

ing

it qu

ite to

the

win

dow.

You

had

not

hing

bet

ter

to b

e do

ing,

not

in th

e da

rkne

ss

that

cre

pt a

roun

d yo

u lik

e st

rang

e in

sect

s be

lieve

d ex

tinct

. B

ut y

ou f

unct

ion

bette

r at

ni

ght,

don’

t you

? Aw

ay f

rom

the

eyes

of

the

wor

ld th

at d

isbe

lieve

and

qua

ntify

. You

’d

tried

rea

ding

and

mov

ies,

push

-ups

and

mas

turb

atio

n. T

here

wou

ld b

e no

sle

ep to

nigh

t.

They

hav

e no

t a

stitc

h of

dec

ency

bet

wee

n th

em, a

ppar

ently

, the

se p

eopl

e. T

hey

wal

k th

e da

y in

nig

htcl

othe

s. Th

ey s

it on

the

balc

ony

for

all d

rear

y af

tern

oon,

sm

okin

g in

num

erab

le c

igar

ette

s. Yo

u ex

amin

e th

em t

hen

too

– fr

om t

he k

itche

n si

nk, t

he p

atio

, th

e pi

ctur

e w

indo

w o

f the

land

ing

upst

airs

. You

clo

ak y

ours

elf i

n cu

rtain

s. Yo

u la

ugh

and

wav

e yo

ur t-

shirt

aro

und

your

hea

d, m

umbl

ing

tune

s fr

om a

n ol

d fil

m a

bout

Aus

tria

and

nuns

, the

wor

ds a

ll fo

rgot

ten

now.

You

r fee

t fit t

he fo

xtro

t. Th

e em

pty

hous

e re

verb

erat

es.

A

nd t

heir

light

s st

ay l

it. T

hey

chas

e aw

ay e

very

thin

g bu

t yo

u. N

ot e

ven

the

TV

l

icen

ce i

nspe

ctor

s w

ould

ven

ture

the

re,

not

even

the

mot

hs w

ith t

heir

soft

but

tact

ful

face

s. Yo

u st

ay, h

owev

er, w

ith y

our

win

gs c

urle

d up

tig

ht a

gain

st t

he c

old,

yo

ur f

eet

web

bed

for

a se

a yo

u’ll

neve

r w

alk

upon

, ba

rric

aded

aga

inst

the

ir py

-ja

mas

an

d or

dina

ry

dole

-live

s by

th

e lig

hts

that

th

ey

wou

ld

neve

r ex

tingu

ish.

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Free da bird, one dollar?

Free da bird, one dollar?

Free da bird? There is a certain kind of guilt you get as a ‘westerner’ when holidaying in a developing country.

But luckily there are many really beautiful distractions that a tourist has to ignore such priviledged guilt.

Guilt - however can never be fully escaped

Free da bird, one dollar?

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Free da bird, one dollar?

Free da bird, one dollar?

Free da bird?

20

In the end I gave the Dollar ... unable to resist this counterintuitive but painfully cute ‘offer’.

I c o u l d n ’ t h e l p t h i n k i n g . . .

Free bird, one dollar??

Free the bird, one dollar?

One Dollar, Free the bird?

For a very brief moment I felt genuinely good ...

Although I couldn’t help but feel Guiltier afterward ...

21For a very brief moment I felt genuinely good ...

Although I couldn’t help but feel Guiltier afterward ...

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24

IN THE ENDYOU GO WITH THE HOOKER OPTION

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You make tea because it’s expected. She clacks around in her stilettos, shoes you admire because of the flex of the calf. You lean on your elbows against the counter that’s covered to look like gran-ite. Accentuating your breasts (globes of fat that people comment on favour-ably because of their form and size), you wait for the kettle to boil. The prickly echoes of boiling water sound like the thud of bees against the metal. They swarm in there, crawling over one an-other, struggling for the light of the spout tunnel, yearning for your globes of fat and the flex of her legs under the skirt. So, you say, over the click of the boiling point, how are you doing? Your stom-ach squirms like worms. Are you driving?Yes, she answers, I was nearby. I see.

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You stir the sugar loudly, handing her the carton to milk the tea herself. It was po-lite, after all. You lean against the coun-ter again, the kitchen tiled and silent now between you both. It fills the room like cotton. It fills your mouth, your nos-trils, your ears and vagina. Your menses is stopped with silence. She sips her tea, your eyes all pupil now. You feel them stretch. And your invisible self, upstairs with her, naked on the bed. The feel of her hipbones beneath your palms, her ribs and jugular notch. The fit of your jaw against her collarbone. Her eyes de-vour any colour the room has left. You’re warm in your clothes with this flesh in your arms and the bees are everywhere, creeping through the remaining light, to the place between sacred time and space.

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