All I have to do
is follow my veins
and press hard.
I try to make a mark, just near my wrist.
A thin line of blood appears.
I drop the knife and jump before
it falls on my toes
then —
I stand, frozen
and time freezes with me.
Everything has stopped. Except for my eternal
river of tears.
I scrub the knife, hard
and put it back into the drawer,
and tear wildly at my note
until there are paper snowflakes drifting
down
down
down
a reminder of what I couldn’t do.
I burn the shreds.
The thin red line
Her friends know something is wrong
by the way Char refuses to take her jumper off
even when they have to do hot, sweaty push-ups in PE.
They say, ‘We’re worried about you.’
But she already knows.
She knows they will be sad.
They might even cry.
And they might miss her for a while.
But they’ll forget.
They have things to live for.
She is so busy thinking about how to tell them goodbye
that in Science, sitting next to Bronwyn, she distractedly
Pushes Her Sleeves Back.
Bronwyn/alarmed
When I saw her arm I knew that we weren’t
just talking some new craze
like sketching tattoos on yourself.
This was serious.
And, like, how would I know what to do?
I feel confused, anxious, worried.
I feel scared.
Goodbye notes
Under her bed, in the space between
the bed and the wall,
Char drops her secret goodbye notes.
She feels as if
she is posting them.
They are all the same.
Dear ...I love you, goodbye, love Char.
Because she knows she will never be able to describe
the blackness inside her
that is pulling her in.
Make it go away
she screams at herself.
You are stupid.
You are ugly.
No one likes you.
Get out of their hair.
What she doesn’t see is her friends think she is
smart
pretty
talented
and a beautiful person.
Bronwyn thinks
that Char is wearing blinkers.
She sees what she wants to see.
Hears what she wants to hear.
Believes what she wants to believe.
And like a stubborn racehorse,
Bronwyn thinks,
Char can’t see she’s galloping into trouble.
Being good
Char pulls away from everything.
Her dad thinks it’s a phase.
Julie cannot believe that something would be wrong with
her perfectly (perfect) well-adjusted child.
Char is a separate entity.
She wants to be the well-behaved, polite daughter
but the effort is too much.
I can’t please them.
I can’t understand why I have to live up to their expectations.
I just want to get out of here.
She can’t remember
when she first felt like this.
It didn’t happen all at once
but like the tallest tree which grows,
slowly but steadfast,
until it gets ripped out by the roots in a storm
and flays mightily in the wind until it
gives
in.
Valued education
At school, strangers who resemble friends ask,
‘How are you?’
She gives the standard supermarket operator reply.
They teach Char how to
smile with teeth
act jubilant and carefree
and use her face as a pliable, trustworthy mask.
Content, strangers
sidle away.
The way they planned
Char
escapes (with parental permission)
to a party at a friend of a friend’s.
She is drunk
on tequila
and escapism.
She dances wildly into the night
and hooks up with Jim
who tastes and smells like beer
but she can fall asleep with him on the tatty sofa
that has been dragged into the backyard
and rests on dewy grass.
In his arms
she feels
safe
safely
safely alone.
Her parents,
in each other’s arms,
feel afraid
for their child
of their child
with their child.
What happened to the way things were planned?
LOW-FAT VERSION
by Bronwyn Mackay
OK, so I wasn’t drinking (or eating) at the party, right? Because, like, alcohol has so many calories and your body breaks it down first, and then, like, all the other stuff you’ve eaten basically just gets turned to fat. Anyway, like, some of the girls at the party were eighteen already, and they went off to the bottle-o, right? Char went with them because, like, she’s pulling away from our group and stuff, and anyway she came back with a bottle of teq. Not just a hotel room mini-bar size one, like a full one where you, like, even get a little red plastic hat. And she was, like, sculling it straight from the bottle. Everyone was fully amazed, because Char is so not that kind of girl. It was like this strange alter-ego clone of Char and even then it still felt like something you would only see happen in a dream. I don’t know how she was drinking straight teq anyway, and she tried to pour some in my Diet Coke. Like, no thanks. Then she was dirty dancing with the bottle-o girls, and Jim walked past and pinched her ass. Like, if someone did that to me, even if I was drunk, I would slap them down. But Char followed him. They went off and, like, fully got it on. She drank almost half of the bottle of teq that night. Can you envision the hangover? She won’t talk to me about it, I can bet you that. I rang her today, but her mum said she was asleep.
After-party
Upon waking, Char feels
hungover.
There is bile in her mouth,
she is being trapped
by the dead weight of Jim’s arm.
They are in disarray.
She feels dirty
and shamed.
Her mother asks, innocently, ‘Did you have a good time
last night, dear?’
She gags on her reply, and for the first time tastes what
she has drunk.
A shower does not wash away the
shame
which makes her feel sicker than the hangover
itself.
English assignment #1
Just take your life
Pretend it’s all right.
Escape into the night.
Dream of a better time.
Your dreams will fall with you.
But I will still be here
To pick you up again.
Take your time to stand.
Another time to fall.
Her teacher labels it
creative
interesting
and disturbing.
Char drinks
every weekend with Jim,
whose parents either don’t realise
or don’t care
what he does. They drink
Bourbon
Rum
Whiskey
Vodka
Beer
Ka
hlua
Goon
until they spew, or pass out,
or both.
It is escapism, pure and true
and since Jim provides it all from his
parents’ liquor cabinet,
it is also free.
She is free.
Staff meeting
Her teachers gather
in a corner of the staffroom
amid their lattes and armfuls of paper
and talk about how
they are watching Char, comet-like,
throwing herself away with reckless
abandon.
Abandonment.
Leaving a fiery blaze
scorching those around her.
Leaving them
burnt out.
One teacher tries
to bridge the gap
and be friendly, compassionate, understanding.
Char, despite her teacher’s efforts,
can’t bring herself to do more than
mime a smile.
A smile that never reaches past her lips.
Isn’t it funny how eyes never lie?
The teacher, resolved, moves away.
There are more problem kids:
— the anorexics
— the bullies
— the drug addicts.
She cannot fix them all and,
as it wasn’t mentioned in last meeting’s agenda,
perhaps it is not her job to do so.
There are rain clouds in my brain
threatening to rain on my parade.
There’s a voice inside my mind
tells me to leave it far behind.
There’s so much sadness inside
I can’t I can’t I can’t hide.
Sometimes there’s nothing inside my head.
Is that what it’s like to be dead?
Virtual reality (make me cry)
The knives in our kitchen mock me.
They know,
just as I do,
what I couldn’t bring myself to do
all those weeks ago, standing in the
cold kitchen.
I wish I had the courage.
I am scared
of dying
of not dying
of being alive.
And that thought
makes me cry.
Jim says
Sometimes Char cries in her sleep.
It is the only time I see her cry.
She cannot be having nightmares
because she looks sad, mostly,
sometimes afraid, but mostly sad.
When I ask her, she blinks in the garish sunlight, wrapping
her hands around the coffee mug she always uses,
and says, ‘I do not remember.’
English Assignment #2
Out of control.
About to fall.
Like a fun house with no doors.
It’s not fun at all.
I want to get out.
I want to escape.
Can nobody hear me shout????
Nosey old bat
Char is
proud
of her little masterpiece.
Her concerned teacher
asks her if there’s anything she’d like to talk about.
Char thinks,
Not with you — nosey old bat!
I remember going swimming, in Uncle Bob’s dam
a few summers ago.
It was Supposed To Be Fun.
Cousin Paul grabbed me and started pulling me under.
He wouldn’t let go.
Every time I screamed
I ended up with more muddy water in my
mouth, nose, lungs.
Every time I struggled
he pulled me down tighter,
giving me bruises, scratches.
I gave up in the end, light-headedly
sinking
into the muck.
Paul got in trouble for that,
but I wonder,
was he trying to teach me something?
If pain persists, please see your doctor
She is looking for a cotton bud
in the medicine cabinet
when her gaze is steadily diverted.
Her hand moves of its own accord.
She hears the crackle (cackle) that the pills in their little
plastic pockets make.
They are very strong painkillers.
They could do harm.
They are tantalising.
She stares, for a long time.
Tempted.
Guilty.
Ashamed.
Indecisive.
Scared.
Until her strongness breaks
and she weeps,
flooding with tears,
sitting on the bathroom floor.
Through the grapevine
Bronwyn asks Jim if he has noticed anything about Char.
He lies, says, ‘No,’
because he does not want to think about it.
The desperation in her eyes.
Needing to be held.
Needing something he is not sure of.
Needing something that he cannot give.
Char is reckless
She stays out all weekend with Jim,
drunkenly playing chicken with cars on the road,
threatening to jump off the roof,
throw herself down the stairs.
She accidentally stands too close to the bonfire at
one party and is singed.
Jim is worried, but she only replies,
‘Do you know witch burnings used to be a
spectator sport?’
Just like sinking in the water
I am being pulled under.
The shadows pull me under
by myself.
Sometimes I feel
as if I am
watching myself drown.
Pulling myself down.
Watching myself drown.
I am sad
and I am hurting.
I do stupid things
to see what will happen.
Try as I might,
I can’t make myself care.
Just a scratch
It is at Jim’s one night
that things really go
wrong.
She is drunkenly making sandwiches
with a sharply glistening knife.
Suddenly
there is blood,
blood everywhere.
Where did it come from?
Oh no, feeling dizzy, Jim, help me please.
Jim tenderly bandages her wrist
tries to
kiss it better.
Char is crying, like a small child,
and cannot stop.
Jim holds her tight, strokes her hair,
until she curls into him, kitten-like, asleep.
Jim thinks,
What the hell was that about?
It was, after all, just a scratch.
Nightmares
They’ve
come again.
Every night, uninvited.
I wake up shaking, sweaty, on edge.
I cannot sleep.
I daren’t sleep.
Like a fog
Embers of yellow light
wend like drifts of faint smoke
around the edges of the
bedroom door (impenetrable wall)
signalling the awakened state of the occupant inside.
She cannot sleep
preferring light to darkness,
restlessness to nightmares,
reality to dreams.
Blackened thoughts, cowardly,
course the same path through her mind,
slipping in through the cracks,
taking over,
like a fog.
Skin and bones
‘Skin and bones, Char, you’re nothing
(You’re
Nothing) but skin and bones,
skin and bones, skin and bones.
Eat something for goodness sake,’
her mother says.
How does she explain
it’s not worth the effort
and nothing tastes good any more.
Skin and bones, skin and bones,
she is taunted.
Nothing but a pile of skin
and bones.
Always let your conscience be your guide
Jim makes Char go to the school’s guidance counsellor.
She only half drags her feet,
worn with frustration,
submissive from lack of sleep,
numb and hollow with nothing to blame.
The counsellor asks
many questions, most rhetorical.
After the cross-examination, it is proclaimed.
‘You might have depression.’
(You are labelled. You are labelled.)
Char feels odd,
oddly quiet.
At least she knows now, it’s not just her imagination.
The other, more sly, persuasive voice in her head whispers,
‘You need to live up to your label.
Don’t let the team down, Char.
It’s hopeless now.
Give up on yourself because they already have.’
The voice in her head is gentle, persistent, and tells her it is
So damn right.
The voice speaks
and she, compliant, listens.
Good parents
Julie and Paul
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 2
