fountain where jazz should be played, toward the first line of trees. Her heels sink backward in the wetter patches of grass, making her awkward. Taking grace from her bravery.
His sits against the bole of a huge tree mostly hidden in the triangle space made by the roots. She sees bare feet, nails, knuckles, an arch, long bones, and her hands are so helpless beside her, so desperate for something to hold that they reach out to him as he stands up and press against his chest and into his ribs as if they could slide between each bone, tear at the membrane and hold his heart. Now her back flattens against the tree, the crush of his body printing bark onto skin, gluing her to it with his sweat, while his breath is winter in her mouth and his dust and gravel stormwater is sticky down her thighs. A magpie warbles, taking off from the branches above them laughing at their pale featherless skin in the cold air, laughing at them pulling up pants and fixing zips.
He sits again in the triangle roots, crosses his legs, takes off his shoes. Small pieces of bark and dry leaves shake loose from her hair as she runs her hands through its curls, walking away and not looking back. The needle slides into the short vein on the side of his toe, more laneway than road. He closes his eyes, injects, sees the flat planes of lawn ruche as her feet slow and spread; sees great cords of timber winding out from her soles, grabbing at the soil, sinking through its layers. The sun filters yellow shine and the sky glows blue through her spread out arms and canopy hair and now all of her is veined with brown sap and wet rain slips gloriously over her leaves, dripping off her tips, so cool, so calm, as marvellous as the morphine travelling round his veins.
He has all he wants: morphine and a lover like a tree.
Hooked
TOBY SIME
She wasnât the girl. She was a whole other girl, riding a horse uphill on a rose-yellow road of crushed quartz and sandstone, between small green hills and a huge, still, baking blue sky. I only met her that day; her name was Eva. She was happy, partly, I knew, because I was following her, looking at her happy young hair and shoulders and arse as they rose and fell in the saddle, looking at one not more than another, happy myself even though I knew I was lost; lost, because although she was someone, Eva, she was also anyone, some girl Iâd just met, and I knew that Iâd follow that petite, smiling, ordinary vision over the edge of the world, if sheâd only let me do it.
My father was the same, happy enough being lost, but he sometimes felt the need to be coarse, even insulting, about the women he flaneured along behind. I donât know why. In truth, he loved them. He just couldnât live with them. But among the swill were a few pearls. He put me onto a quote from Goethe; according to him, a couple of days before he died Goethe wrote, in his journal, Eternal Womanhead leads us on high . I knew, though I wished otherwise, it was the story of my life; only, which way is high? There isnât really an up or down, is there, because the universe is infinite; upâs an illusion caused by where we stand on the earth⦠I look at the stars, flowing in the gutterwater at night; I look at them up there, flowing through that other gutter, Time; oneâs no more real, no more beautiful than the other. Only the vision counts, ahead of you on the road. Leadme high, lead me low, same thing, as long as you can lead; as long as Iâm willing to be led.
In St Kilda, in late summer or early autumn, there was another girl, the girl in this story. My tram was laid up in a shunting neck for an hour. My driver had gone for lunch and ciggies, I was probably doing chin-ups on the strap bar, a couple of passengers were waiting âtill we got going. She was sitting quietly at the back; I felt she looked somehow wrong. When I went to her I saw she was cryingânot demonstratively, but stilly, hopelessly. She had
His sits against the bole of a huge tree mostly hidden in the triangle space made by the roots. She sees bare feet, nails, knuckles, an arch, long bones, and her hands are so helpless beside her, so desperate for something to hold that they reach out to him as he stands up and press against his chest and into his ribs as if they could slide between each bone, tear at the membrane and hold his heart. Now her back flattens against the tree, the crush of his body printing bark onto skin, gluing her to it with his sweat, while his breath is winter in her mouth and his dust and gravel stormwater is sticky down her thighs. A magpie warbles, taking off from the branches above them laughing at their pale featherless skin in the cold air, laughing at them pulling up pants and fixing zips.
He sits again in the triangle roots, crosses his legs, takes off his shoes. Small pieces of bark and dry leaves shake loose from her hair as she runs her hands through its curls, walking away and not looking back. The needle slides into the short vein on the side of his toe, more laneway than road. He closes his eyes, injects, sees the flat planes of lawn ruche as her feet slow and spread; sees great cords of timber winding out from her soles, grabbing at the soil, sinking through its layers. The sun filters yellow shine and the sky glows blue through her spread out arms and canopy hair and now all of her is veined with brown sap and wet rain slips gloriously over her leaves, dripping off her tips, so cool, so calm, as marvellous as the morphine travelling round his veins.
He has all he wants: morphine and a lover like a tree.
Hooked
TOBY SIME
She wasnât the girl. She was a whole other girl, riding a horse uphill on a rose-yellow road of crushed quartz and sandstone, between small green hills and a huge, still, baking blue sky. I only met her that day; her name was Eva. She was happy, partly, I knew, because I was following her, looking at her happy young hair and shoulders and arse as they rose and fell in the saddle, looking at one not more than another, happy myself even though I knew I was lost; lost, because although she was someone, Eva, she was also anyone, some girl Iâd just met, and I knew that Iâd follow that petite, smiling, ordinary vision over the edge of the world, if sheâd only let me do it.
My father was the same, happy enough being lost, but he sometimes felt the need to be coarse, even insulting, about the women he flaneured along behind. I donât know why. In truth, he loved them. He just couldnât live with them. But among the swill were a few pearls. He put me onto a quote from Goethe; according to him, a couple of days before he died Goethe wrote, in his journal, Eternal Womanhead leads us on high . I knew, though I wished otherwise, it was the story of my life; only, which way is high? There isnât really an up or down, is there, because the universe is infinite; upâs an illusion caused by where we stand on the earth⦠I look at the stars, flowing in the gutterwater at night; I look at them up there, flowing through that other gutter, Time; oneâs no more real, no more beautiful than the other. Only the vision counts, ahead of you on the road. Leadme high, lead me low, same thing, as long as you can lead; as long as Iâm willing to be led.
In St Kilda, in late summer or early autumn, there was another girl, the girl in this story. My tram was laid up in a shunting neck for an hour. My driver had gone for lunch and ciggies, I was probably doing chin-ups on the strap bar, a couple of passengers were waiting âtill we got going. She was sitting quietly at the back; I felt she looked somehow wrong. When I went to her I saw she was cryingânot demonstratively, but stilly, hopelessly. She had