Sitting Sea
My house sits a little way from here, tucked into the neck of the rivers rock. It cradles the other side of the shore, so it’s not visible from where I’m sitting. Crossed legged, with half a soft apple in my hand. Here, the ocean is framed by the check of twin curtains and the length of one swirling iron railing. It is full tide again, and the water stretches, expanding to fill the gently resisting harbour. Like cheeks full of water. Or a stomach full of lunch. I sit and watch it full up, as I eat my pork in silence, pushing it around on its little plate.
A Pass Time, Marla King.
Marla is a dance artist, who is passionate about the environment and promoting environmental sustainability.
I rarely go home anymore. It is a tall cavern of a building with barley enough light inside to read, even in the middle of a summer’s day. The veranda has a cold wind that blows everything away - apart from the dead flies, which are anchored to every surface. The garden chairs are stained with salt and adorned with moss. We use the chairs to hang up the washing lines, the hanging clothes crowd the verandas earthy sky with reds and yellows, and the keen wind makes them flap. From the veranda you can just make out the sight of the river through the fur trees, when their leaves fall off, the slender spine of the tree is exposed, and the arched back of rivers rushed light uncovered. Dad’s sadness has become so stiff, so arched that it petrifies me. The whole house howls for my mother’s drunkenness, wishing it could be swaddled by her hysterics once again.
When I used to walk home from school, I’d stop by the forest before our house and breath in the thin air and close my eyes. I could hear the birds screeching away above me, and the sound of the ocean on the other side slapping away at the rocks. Inside the house – my mother. Nothing apart from her. Rearranging the front room in her big boots because she wanted us to be able to sit in the sun in the evenings. She was desperate to cut down the trees so that we would be able to see the full length of the river, so that the house would not be shadowed by the stern forest. She used my fresh Christmas paints to draw ostriches and pelicans, to imagine life beyond us. She sat in the front room, smiling to herself in the glory of waiting for my dad to return. Waiting for him to yell at her for not washing me, for not making me dinner. Or for making me dinner, but charring it black and then starting again with a new leg of lamb. Fresh. He was most angry when she took me swimming in winter- we dripped all over the house and lay under their duvet in their shared bed. Sometimes when I returned, it was as though I was hours late ‘Come on!’ she’d cry, no time for embraces- she’d rush me to the river, and we’d sit and build castles in the low tide.
After a while, I lost her to her room where I could hear the pound of music cry out. Dad used to make me knock on the door to ask if she needed anything – he was too afraid of her growing anger which I now strained towards. I found comfort in its persistence; it made me less afraid then her outlandish pride. She loved watching my dad’s rage when I was cold, or dirty or hungry. She rejoiced in excitement at his disappointment, coyly watching him heave his heaviness around. Eventually he stopped reprimanding her. It gave her too much joy. Now she lies, always, under the fur trees she wanted to get rid of so badly, looking out on the water that eventually swallowed her whole- drunkenness and all. My dad told me that he had found her on the shore in the morning, sprawled out, not a slither of life in her whole frame.
I can’t believe that is the way she died.
I watch the ocean slip out, racing from the shore, ripping itself from the rocks. We are left here, again, abandoned, and waiting for her to steal away our days with joy again.