words and music

It starts with the unravelling of thoughts, words, memories and emotions. It starts with a couple of beers.

Every song has a thousand reference points, every album a constellation of flashbacks. I could take every conversation I've had and to a burnt CD and still have enough room left over to drop in some quintessential favourites.

That riff was us driving away from those shallow hot water streams, where I lay in the water till my skin turned into sunsets of blisters, pink is the colour of love fading. That was the first time I read those cards and what they told me terrified me so much that I almost threw them into that cauldron spring.

These lyrics are the longing of distant lovers, of unexpected phonecalls and flooded desert sands. They are the words before you came here, the ones still pungent after you left.

And this sympony, that whole wedge of banded silver. They are the days of eternal baking, $1 stone fruit and clothing racks. The days of kissing at train stations, love so passionate it shook the whole house even as the Upfield line was still. The days of the little house in flemington, too much gunja and the boy who planted flowers as a sign of his love. The boy who forgot to water them, planted seeds in too shallow ground. Their petals grew stunted, cornflower blue. All my walks to the maribynong wouldn't save us. No matter how many punnets of cut price potted colour I purchased, the drought was long and the city was dust storms.

He has since found greener fields.

Me. I moved to the desert with dust older than kin. With mountains that mimic my spinal column. keeping lovers close to saltwater, I plunge my fingers into these empty river beds, and strain my nails searching for liquid. My bed is silent now. Tossing in my sleep, dreaming of sustanence that never reaches my lips.