by Ian C. Smith

Alone, I know I am scarred, a good man, flawed, too difficult, but good.  After being so long part of a family, ghost-haunted night passes.  In the pale lemon-coloured morning I go outside as if nothing has changed although troubled enough to fear the future, arguing with myself silently about sequential events, spiralling broken dreams.  I discover where to buy bread and books, milk and meat, return to climb the stained stairs.  Taking possession, I figure out the gas stove, where to put things, where to sit so I can eat and read at the same time.  Life, ultimately, must end with loss. 

After losing myself recalling characters, hours spent drinking and talking, crumbs now hardening, a tawny scum shrinking on my cold tea, I also recall a snack I invented for my ravenous boys.  Fridge and larder near-empty, I spread sun-dried tomatoes on white sliced bread toasted on one side, beginning a ritual that made them as happy as freed balloons.  Even then, a simple snack maker, I feared the ending to this story, the one where the ship with black sails arrives overnight, water lap-lapping against a desolate wharf with me the lone figure waiting to meet it. 

I listen, avoiding those souls squirreled away in other rooms.  Venturing on my first night prowl I map the shadowy neighbourhood’s labyrinthine geography wary of approaching footsteps, learning at each turn.  Eventually I retrace my steps before taking ages to unlock my door in darkness, panic, anger, slouching my way with intent, these new keys foreign, trembling.  Quartered, frugal, I read again under a lone light, later, settling to restless sleep.  The next morning I wake to an unfamiliar routine, leave, out of sync, for my new job where no-one has my correct address and no contacts buttress my phone.  I disappear into blackened bricks tattooed with graffiti, and exhaust fumes. 

Evening.  The worst time of day, that crushing sadness an assassin.  Jack-knifing a susurrus of sit-ups surrounded by Philip Glass on low volume I hear a child’s sudden cry evoking a memory from when we drove through the long night, a mountainous interstate rural homecoming hoping the fractious boys, so young then, fragrancing the car with their fragile breath, would sleep through most of our journey.  This same hushed ethereal music was playing.  Occasionally, lights of other nocturnal travellers zigzagging over and around that rugged cold landscape briefly bathed us like semaphores, as if recording tiny moments in the history of vulnerable people.  You can’t just grab the past, haul it back, then fix it, I think, again hearing the child’s distress seeming to begin deep in my own heart. 

Valuing privacy since boyhood when there was none, I work, completing chores with waning conscious effort.  Night follows night, bringing familiarity until I begin to confront, at last, what brought me to this.  As if an automaton I repeat sit-ups counting, pain, sweat increasing as rain drenches the black city.  Although reminders lie in wait mocking my absurdity, lonely days shall pass, however slowly, if I just keep going.  Soon, when narrative, my life’s bane, starts to thread together, I shall push aside unwashed plates, open a new file, begin my story braving the jagged edges of memory: human frailty, foolhardiness, secrets’ toxic echoes, light and shade, swept along by the current of life’s force. 

Australian author Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, Offcourse, Stand and Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.