apply lip gloss
fix unruly strands of hair
run their tongues over their teeth to remove lippy stains
adjust their strapless bras as they head ever south.
Then they
Emerge.
A friend of a friend takes an interest in Bronwyn.
They dance,
share small talk,
laugh.
Several hours
and shots of tequila
later
he whispers to her,
‘You’d be really pretty
if you weren’t so thin.’
Fuck you,
she thinks,
but
she knows those nine words will stay with her for a long time.
Lee gets drunk and disappears with a guy.
Later,
he stumbles back into the party
clutching a beer and
fumbling to do up the zipper on his jeans.
Char is splayed on Jim’s lap,
almost like an ornamental piece,
but it’s obvious she’s drunk.
They occasionally kiss,
interlink their fingers.
Char nestles into his shoulder
And looks up at the low-slung moon,
thin and yellow.
Monday Monday
At school,
the party is the topic of conversation.
Bronwyn blushes, and shyly giggles,
when she admits that she might,
just might,
have a boyfriend — worth keeping.
Lee slinks into school
looking gaunt
huge sunnies on her face
jumper pulled down over her hands
hair hanging over her ears
to block out the whispers and giggles about her.
During Maths,
Char asks if she can go to the toilets.
She finds Lee,
splotchy-eyed,
huddling.
‘I’m not a slut, Char. I’m not.’
News moves fast
I stay in the toilets with Lee
until the bell goes for lunch.
And tell her about when Jim and I first met.
I tell her
the whispers
giggles
sly looks
will fade.
Next weekend
there will be new gossip,
and she will be
glossed over.
Luckily for her,
she doesn’t have to wait that long.
Some stupid kid got caught smoking pot in the toilets.
News moves fast around here.
Lee says
I feel
Used
Discarded
like a soggy tissue
flung into the bin.
I doodle on my folder
swirls
over and over
hypnotic.
But I can’t stop thinking
that I’m
used goods.
Stood up
Lee and I
are meant to be going shopping together
on Saturday morning.
(I’m finally forgiven.)
I wait,
impatiently,
drink three coffees,
check my watch twenty times.
She isn’t answering her phone.
I know
she had a date last night
and she’s probably sleeping.
Bitch.
I’ve been
stood up.
When I get home,
muttering under my breath like a petulant child,
Mum’s waiting at the door for me.
Instantly
I know she’s got
bad news.
Turns out
that Lee went on her date last night.
They went out to a party after the movies
and both got drunk.
The guy she was with
swore he was okay to drive,
and Lee didn’t want to ring her parents
because it was so late
so she said okay.
Turns out
the guy she was with
wasn’t okay to drive
and he drove into a tree
and Lee was in the car
and she isn’t okay.
False cheer
I’m apprehensive
walking into the hospital
my arms loaded with
chocolates
flowers
magazines.
Lee has stitches down her cheek
a cast on her arm
and another on her leg
and bruises everywhere.
There’s a tube connecting her to a drip
and two others connecting her to machines.
She’s doped up on painkillers,
but smiles weakly as I come in,
full of
false cheer
that falters and stalls as slowly,
but deliberately,
she tells me
what happened.
Lee/my hair
It was horrible, Char.
The last thing I remember was heading towards a tree,
Nick saying ‘Oh fuck’,
and hearing glass shatter.
Then I woke up in emergency
and I remember not being able to move.
They had me in a neck brace.
Thank god I haven’t broken my spine.
Mum and Dad were there in their dressing gowns,
and they were both crying.
They said to me,
‘Any time of the day or night
you can call us
any time,
do you understand?
We’d rather be woken up and you be okay
than to get a call from the police or hospital
in the middle of the night.
Don’t you ever
do that again.’
I start crying,
and say,
‘Look at the back of my head.’
It’s a struggle to manoeuvre my body
and lift my head from the pillows,
and when Char looks
I can hear her gasp.
From the front,
my hair looks normal.
But at the back,
my hair has been
shorn
and replaced
with a long, snakelike row
of stitches,
precise and careful.
I can hear my voice, pitiful
as I say,
‘They shaved my hair, Char.
They shaved my hair.’
Around the coffee machine
At the coffee machine
I see her parents,
still in their woolly dressing gowns and slippers,
looking every one of their years.
They’re buying what must be their hundredth
crappy machine coffee of the day,
but it’s hot, and wet, and has caffeine in it.
Her mum tells me
they’re pressing charges against the guy.
Her eyes well over
as she says,
‘Look how lucky we were.
I don’t know what I’d do
if Lee had been . . .’
I know that she can’t finish the sentence.
I tell them to go home,
have a shower,
a sleep,
some food.
They smile indulgently at me,
take their coffees
and walk back towards the ward.
Something nice I can do
The school formal is on Friday
but I don’t really feel like going.
Lee tells me not to be ridiculous,
she wants to hear all of the gossip.
I decide to duck into the hos
pital with Jim
before we go to the formal
so she can see us all dressed up.
That’s something nice I can do.
Lee/being brave
Char and Jim visit me before going to the formal.
Char looks so pretty.
And Jim looks really cute in a tux and top hat.
I smile bravely at them
and try to be excited
but
inside
I’m jealous
that I’m not going too.
Char knows that something is wrong
but I just tell her I’m tired,
and soon after,
she leaves,
full of vigour and excitement.
I want to go
and it’s not fair
that I’m stuck in this hospital bed
scarred and broken.
Mum and Dad keep telling me how lucky I am
but I don’t feel lucky tonight, not at all.
I turn on my side
and cry quietly
so the nurses don’t hear.
Bronwyn
I think
that my latest boyfriend, Jack,
is lovely.
Char giggles at me,
makes kissing sounds,
and sings that old song about
‘Sitting in a tree
k-i-s-s-i-n-g’.
What she doesn’t know
is that he
warms me up inside
the whole way through.
At the formal
Some of the boys are caught with hipflasks and
get suspended and
Mick turns up in a yellow suit and
the girls tell him he looks weird.
Two of the girls turn up in the same dresses and
bitch about each other all night and
there are about five teachers brave enough to get on the
dance floor and the cool kids laugh at them and
the speeches go for a really long time and
one of the girls turns up in an ultra-revealing dress
and her boobs pop out halfway through the night and
she gets suspended and
it passes by
so fast.
Gossip
In the girls’ toilets,
Char is in a cubicle
when some of the girls from the self-proclaimed
‘cool group’ come in.
She listens for a few minutes as they gossip, meanly
about this girl’s dress
or that girl’s hair.
She comes out,
irate,
and says,
‘You know who the real losers are?
It’s you lot.
You don’t do anything except laugh at other people
so you can feel better about yourselves.
You’re not brave enough to do anything
in case someone laughs at you.
Just get a life.’
They bitch about her from their table all night,
but she doesn’t care.
You can’t be hurt by people you don’t care about.
I still don’t know
what I want to be when I grow up
and it scares me a little.
I’m thinking about this in class,
not really listening to Ol’ Yapper
until he says,
‘Nelson Mandela said that it isn’t our darkness we’re afraid of.
It’s our light.
We think,
Who am I to achieve my dreams?
Who am I to be successful?
Why do I deserve that kind of happiness?
But the truth is,
ladies and gents,
the truth is
that you do.
You don’t make dark corners darker
by letting your own light fully shine.’
The blackness in my head
Is turning grey
And I can’t help but wonder
If it will ever be fully gone.
Tonight I wish
that I had some sleeping pills left
to get me through the agonising hours
until dawn.
I feel
so tired
but I can’t sleep.
I gnaw at my fingernails
until they’re bitten-down, bleeding stubs.
I pace the room
like a caged rat.
I draw tatts on my arm
until my pens have run out of ink.
I visit the fridge for midnight snacking
even though it’s finally about three am.
The shrink warned me
that the insomnia
might stick around
and that I will still have ‘down days’.
But she didn’t remind me
that it’s always worse
at night.
Midnight snack
Char sits,
snacking on a cheese and potato chip sandwich,
interspersed with a glass of milk.
Her hair is matted,
and curls have formed at the nape of her neck from the
friction on the pillow as she tossed and turned.
She’s staring,
hypnotically,
at the knife block in the kitchen.
Sandwich finished,
she rises,
puts her plate and glass into the sink
and pads back up the stairs.
English Assignment #5
I have a shadow
that follows me
everywhere I go.
It shadows my thoughts
and makes them dark
on the sunniest of days.
I have a shadow
that mostly hides
coming out at the strangest of times.
It cannot be shushed
and it won’t be ignored
and it makes me want to cry.
I have a shadow
that makes me feel blue
even on happy days.
I ask, and I beg, and I plead with my shadow
but sometimes it won’t go away.
Down
Mum says, with concern in her eyes,
that I can go back to the shrink if I want.
But I don’t.
I just want to be
left the fuck alone.
I have a bath that night
sinking into the steamy water
down
down
down
until I’m lying flat on the bathtub
holding my breath.
Eventually
I resurface
gasping air.
Another night
and I can’t sleep.
I count imaginary sheep.
They mock me,
laughing,
taunting.
I find my headphones,
jam them in my ears,
and turn them up loud.
I’m backsliding
down
down
down
maybe it’s futile
maybe I’m just a big pain to everyone
and maybe I’m going to spend the rest of my life like this
and that thought
makes me want to cry.
Control yourself
I go to Bronwyn’s house on a Friday night.
We drink tequila
and walk the streets.
I bum a smoke off someone
and suck it down
out of control
and unable to stop.
I’m about to go to Jim’s, and Bronwyn to her boyfriend’s,
when
she looks at me drunkenly, sadly, tiredly.
‘When are you going to stop relying on other people
to save you, Char?
When are you going to save yourself?’
Jim says
&
nbsp; that everyone needs help, sometimes
but
ultimately
you can’t rely on other people all the time,
maybe because life’s a bitch
and people will let you down,
or maybe because
just maybe because
they can’t control how you feel and what you do.
I tell him
that sometimes I feel like
I can’t control how I feel and what I do.
Bronwyn/burgers and fries
Jack wants to go out for burgers and chips,
washed down with milkshakes.
I tell him no way,
there’s like 40 grams of fat right there.
He tells me that guys don’t like girls who are
scrawny and bony,
they like girls who look healthy,
with boobs and bums,
women who look like women,
not like their little brothers.
Girls who don’t obsess over every little thing
they put in their mouths.
‘What’d you like me for then?’ I grouch.
He laughs, kisses me, and gives me a bite of his burger.
Lee
Lee is out of hospital.
Her hair is growing back
slowly.
The bruises have faded to a yellowy-green
and the guy who was driving has been charged,
although her father spits,
‘Slap on the wrist it was, Char, slap on the wrist.’
I wonder if he knows
the damage he’s done,
wonder if he cares.
When we’re alone in her room,
Lee says,
‘We get mad in this family now.
We yell
scream
feel like punching things
cry with rage.
It’s great —
too bad it took this to make it happen.’
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 13
