by Ian Flatman
Call ‘em Lover. Not far ahead. Three rows towards the front of the carriage, sat in a loose coat, head rested on the window. Their breath exhaled damp light, a-plume when office buildings give way to an intersection of few people breathing in and out the cold of July, the blip for the crossing-lights previously muted of the evening, a sound with pre-chimes of this morning’s news flashes, of another tram.
Lover “there you go. An article just came up you might be interested in from three days ago.” Something about a near experience of death has been mapped in the mind. On the phone a picture of a man tucked into a hospital bed, every part of his exposed body strung by tubes to crowds of machinery, each precise and important as if by pushing the right buttons he would get up and dance, pulling in his wife, Lover, his family from just out the frame to dance with him, chasing death from the room, out the hospital, to the shore, back into the sea’s depths.
It is said that if there is nothing left people would carve themselves into anything they believe will outlast the elements. Running their hand over their face and over their rock ‘till there is a near enough likeness. Then, granting the wind and rain to round out the finishing touches, the people will leave knowing eventually to return, rising up from the water, blowing off the sand and soil, to smile upon those still asleep within the animals wherein they are carried.
Lover however awake brushes away pages of beautiful Mediterranean bedrooms with their fingertip, each one asking them to get out from under the sheets to paint, dive into the waves, maybe finding the part of this labyrinth of Grecian white-washed streets known for cornering pirates with the promise of loose skirts, maybe capture the thin-lace grace of curtains in open windows.
“You can’t miss it, Lover. A coffee?” like every morning recently “Just find the most beautiful place. Windowsills of flowers…perfume still air.” like this place, as good as any, after the waitress stopped making fun of your accent, gave you a coffee she knew how you wanted, but asked you how you wanted anyway, just to laugh, to make it obvious she was laughing all along at how you fumbled simple words in her language, the beauty of it not lost.
She’s a picture with a flower in her hair, taken from the small stand up the street where an old woman asks “Lover? How would you describe time as it narrows towards when you'll see her again?” as if we’d all been picking petals from flowers as children for this very moment. The bunches of colours and pretty names, each one made perfect for an occasion, arranged on a stand near enough to the station to see the changing times on the train schedule, waiting for an answer that should be simple, Lover: anticipation.
Collins St gold rolls off the platforms to news of thefts overseas. Someone had been selling empty bank vaults then fled. How much would be calculated over the years in the ways that used to cover tailored suit pants with chalk dust and send gray ghosts home on quiet trams. Maybe people were saving their voices now, not wanting to cut their throats raw as they would do shouting the names of other things traded endlessly across the floor, not wanting to lose that too, only to find an echo in an empty steel chamber, their mouths unable to utter any more words in exchange.
To call: “Lover.” It hadn’t been too many days for him to try again. His last attempt stuck in the bottom of her bag to ring out. She’d called back soon as she’d stuffed the groceries she bought there in exchange for her phone and dialled straight to the familiar “…Lover…[and the bird that always distracted him]…here. Please leave your message” and didn’t want to leave another recording of the city background like the first notes of a chord while she found her voice to sing, or cry. She was tired of asking him to call back, to call at all. She was tired of only hearing her name in her voice.
“It’s me, Lover.”
***
A body is on the beach stretched out like a body not ready to climb from bed. Someone took a photo before the police arrived, and posted it online with the beautiful parts of all their shared lives. They framed it so it was just a body, the calm of Port Phillip Bay, a ship heading towards Sorrento heads, but mostly open sky, and a few comments from the usual passing views.
“Please be me right now. I want my body like that. Just the sand and the sun on my naked skin. No worries. And maybe just a bit of a someone to come back and kiss me awake from the my dreams in the waves.”
Nobody asked them to take the picture down after it was discovered to be a corpse, not Lover. Nobody knew the two were related. There was so little of the body in the picture. It didn’t bloat enough through in the feeds of the internet for anyone to recognise beyond an impression of one moment in life. More people watched the body crowded on the bike path along St. Kida road, as it was lifted onto a trolley, wheeled to the ambulance, and away to wherever the bury these sorts of things.
It is a likeness she can’t deny, and blushes like she has never seen herself this way before. “Lover” is in the corner of the painting, put there with a fine brush, and hand used to moving it confidently. The body in the picture looks there as if only an excuse for something human to cover in sunlight, some reason to stop heading to the ocean for the promise of gold.
She asks, "What does this mean, ‘Lover?’” in a way you're not sure how to answer, or if you’re sure you want to get used to.
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Ian Flatman lives in Canberra, Australia where he writes poems and builds gardens. Previously published in HAD, mini_MAG, dada_kuku, The End, Spectra, among others.
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