Delia, oh Delia
Delia all my life

I spent Friday night in secret hot springs, silver fish with red eyes swimming between my thighs, owls swooping low over the water, fingers swollen and scaly, nails chipped and black. My knees ached from rock-hopping. I crawled into my swag at five in the morning, discarding a couple of moonlit tears. But I was drunk and the curlews were crying.

If I hadn’ter shot poor Delia
I’d-a had her for my wife

New friends that had materialised in the last couple of weeks disappeared again, and I thought, how do you hold on to people? How does anyone ever hold on to people? I want to keep you in my pocket. The universe knocks us into each other sideways and provides only scraps of time as fuel—it’s no wonder we all feel lonely. Social niceties are hardly worth the time they swallow, surely—let’s embrace instead like long-lost lovers after five minutes of mirth-bubbled banter.

Delia’s gone, one more round
Delia’s gone

Sometimes I want to turn off these nerve endings, these synapses cracking, these red-raw impulses and sympathies, and when we got back to Darwin I squeezed my feet into my high-heeled boots to hide my mosquito-eaten and apple-bruised legs. Just to remember how to wear them. Just to remember how it felt to teeter, to be your doll. But even then my elbows itched, my eyes were tired-swollen, my face unpainted, my manners lax and my enthusiasm low. Alcohol strips me of my ability to provide a shield for myself and I’m feeling the full force of it now, poisonous drug—nausea and the need for a cocoon, even one spun from mud and sun. Even one as remote as this.

Delia’s gone, one more round
Delia’s gone

If this were a conversation, I would end it with a kiss.

I never understood the appeal of what I saw as a ‘quiet’ life. I never understood how one could find meaning in a tiny country town, as though meaning—greater meaning, overarching purpose—could only be created in conjunction with as many other people as possible. If you aren’t doing a job for other people, if you aren’t getting out of bed for other people, if you aren’t changing the world for other people, what’s the point?

This says far more about my own temperament, priorities and misunderstandings than it does about the reality of rural life. I don’t know when I started thinking that days would be spent in idleness, in selfishness—in pointlessness—in the country. I don’t know why I thought that living in the bush would mean life would be reduced to a struggle for daily survival. I don’t know when I started assuming that the cities were the best place to make meaningful differences to the world. And I never thought seriously about how our priorities might be shaped by the physicality of the places we grew up.

At Kalala Station, a 20-year-old ringer called Dan and I sit on an esky in the dust behind the kitchen. ‘Didn’t think you’d last,’ he tells me. ‘Really thought you’d crack after a couple of days.’

So did I. I thought stock work would repulse me, exhaust me, drain the life-blood out of me. Instead it has made me feel alive—I’m excited and enthusiastic and I’m not even sure why. I thought isolation would make me crave people, bustle, company and confusion. Instead it has had the opposite effect, and I’m forever trying to think of the best way to sink into the bush, the best way to feel like I am part of it, the best way to get away. The best way to stay away. And in the cold howling dark of predawn I no longer dread the day. I can, in all honesty, now say: I get it. It is possible to turn the world on its head. It is possible to remake yourself.

You should see the stars out here.

Winter ruptures my insides.

I am dragging this weight around with me, a lump of living flesh that won’t work the way it’s supposed to. Warm, soft, heavy and painful. Created in a moment of madness, like the complications of a kiss. A gasp, the quick paralysis of shock, hot tears and the crunch of bone against bitumen. Don’t watch where you’re going, girl. Tumble off head first.

I remember this girl. I’ve seen her before, half-blind and reeling, a cannonade inside her head. Is this pain or the memory of it? She’ll be back again the next night, back to the spot where she fell. She won’t be on her bike this time but still won’t look where she puts her feet. She knew before she started that it could be dangerous, but people only learn to take care after they fall, and recklessness makes her teeter.

I remember once, driving through an intersection alone late at night. A camera started flashing in the corner of my eye, through the window, bright slaps of white on my forearm gripping the wheel. My heart jumped, blood rushing to my head, and suddenly I couldn’t remember if the traffic light had been green or red, if I’d taken any notice at the time or been so caught up in the song playing, the momentum of the traffic and the smell of summer through the open windows. I kept driving, shaky, breathing quickly, left arm tingling with the memory of that flashing light, like it had stamped itself into my skin, an invisible scar.

Sometimes I think she knows she’s losing, as I watch her block me out with wine and noise, the light of a computer screen, or the hard, fleeting warmth of pills and potions. And all she wants me to do is put her in the car and drive, grip the wheel with both hands, and burn a straight line down the freeway, a straight line to wherever and ever. And I want to be able to do that too, but I have one arm bound across my chest now and it feels like paralysis, artificial inertia. Because I remember that girl; I remember how she felt back then. I remember her pleading with me, trying to convince me that it would be okay, that head first was the only way to fall. But she mistook arrogance for strength, ego for confidence, intelligence for understanding and intensity for passion. And in her moments of shock she listens when I speak. That voice that knows best—that voice in her head—pick yourself up, pick yourself up, you’re tougher than this, pick yourself up. And so we get back on the bike and ride home in the dark, whether from stubbornness or fear, it doesn’t matter. I know what to do, because I remember her curled up in the cold, I remember the smear of tears in the fine hairs of her arm—this arm, the dead weight, a limb and the light fantastic—so while she’s still numb I put a bullet in it, because I don’t want her to cry again.

The sky has been crackling and sparking all evening. I am supposed to be writing but instead I am thinking about the new year, about sticky days with champagne and sweat and lessons on shattering crystal. About seawater in my jeans at five in the morning, numb fingers and an unexpected kiss. About swimming naked across a river to watch the lightning dance through the cloud-mountains for hours, a full moon high in the sky behind me, above the blue-black and grey silhouettes that make up the midnight world. We sat on a mudpan, a field so flat and wide and dry that the horizon looked an arm’s length away. The sky was alive, but the world was silent. Silence that wasn’t silence. Bush silence: the whir and chirp of the night insects and the semitone interval drop of a boobook. The rain is coming, they murmured. The earth is singing for it.

Music has colour, the same way words have mood. It’s like an extension of the sound, another dimension to the experience. A veil through which you can see the world. A veil just behind your eyes. Tonight’s song is the colour of light through rainwater, and I’m never sure if this is love or sadness, but it’s not so much an ache these days, more of a hum. Not quite disillusionment, but its sister, perhaps. And again, again, this mind of mine, despite all its stretching out, it always seems to circle back to solitude, back to the self, still fascinated by the experience of being alone, of thinking alone, of knowing alone—and this song that I can’t stop playing.

Thunder is the sound that trembling would make, in the hot dark, the sparse ground radiating from a sunken sun. Something is trembling now, and it’s coming towards this house, towards me, a rising crescendo. At 3am, the storm hits. The rain pounds, the sky heaves, and there is so much water. It pours down the window pane, rivers against the trunks of trees, and I am swamped by the sheer weight of the sound, each rivulet singing a memory, splashing against a melody, the ground drinking greedily. It fills my head, drenching my heart, like it may as well be pouring out of the walls around me, that rainsong, over and over and over, skin prickling even now as the music ripples around it, and it’s all I can do to throw my head back and be swept along because simple sounds have never changed the world quite like this. I am submerged in it. I am consumed by it.

And now it’s 4:29am. I’ve hit ‘play’ thirty-eight times tonight. I see bare legs, smooth knees, the dim light of my laptop on the bedsheets, slight black scuff marks from shoeless household wanderings, and I am bone dry but I am swamped.

It’s 4:29am and that’s the first glow of fresh dawn through the bamboo.

It’s 4:29am and the leaves outside are dripping, still.

It’s 4:29am and I am, I am, I am.

Or of oranges plucked from a tree at 3am, spitting rain, tram tracks and electric lights, and another woman’s bed. (I never told him, but I found myself then.)

Or of those who didn’t want to talk about it but preferred instead to talk it out; who wanted to hear the words expelled from my mouth, staccato blasphemy: ‘Fuck, suck, cock, cunt. Does that make you feel good?’ (Face forward, kitten. I want you on your knees.)

And there again—bee-stings on my cheeks and things rough to touch, like skin on bark, a man’s chin inside my thigh—a dirty angel face, a beautiful beast. (When I draw, it’s trees: haunted, leaf-bare skeletons, curling branches. There’s more in my head, but that’s what comes out.)

And then there were those stories that made girls like me believe that love and sex made you feel the same way; that a declaration changed the world; that a couple of words were comparable to being pressed up against a wall with a tongue in your ear. Or limbs and fingers and hair, gasps and laughter, knotted together in damp sheets. Or binding someone’s arms because that’s what they asked for. Or coming home after a sleepless night with sore breasts and bruising between your legs, but still so desperately wanting, wanting, wanting, and not able to touch yourself for the pain.

Or was an orgasm the moment when the universe shifted? An escape from yourself; an embrace of yourself. A little bit of another person. A little death; a little life. Rebellion. (Touch me, and we’ll see.)

And every time I think I could make a choice to last a lifetime, I grow some more, learn some more, see the possibilities expand. And sometimes I think I might find enough comfort in a glass of red wine and a drunken stumble into a stranger’s arms—maybe a little taller, a little older, a little further away—because after all, it’s mostly chemistry, and everyone looks good in the dark. But even when it means nothing, it carries weight. Perhaps no more than the heat of your breath—just enough to maintain the push—but weight, nevertheless. Minute momentum.

So I won’t close myself off and I won’t hide, but one way or another I know what I’ll be left with, which is exactly the same as I’ve always had: the world in my head, an open window, and a cool breeze on swollen skin.

The bugs have been biting my legs since I got to Brisbane. I douse myself in insect repellent, swat them away, slap them, swear at them, beg them to stop, but still they bite. I wake up in the morning with little red welts peppering my legs.

2.

There is frangipani in the garden, a forest of bamboo and a possum that likes roast potato. Each night, it climbs down from the trees and sits next to the porch railing, playing chicken with Murphy the cat and waiting for scraps.

3.

Being social is an effort, even with people I know very well. Even with people I love. What I want has nothing to do with it; after awhile, of their own accord, my body and my brain begin to rebel.

4.

Out on the Moil River, near Peppimenarti, the mosquitoes are particularly nasty. They carry brain fever and disease, as well as a brutal itch. They breed in the swamp, sharing the mud, reeds and lilies with the barramundi that were hiding from our fishing lines and a huge saltwater crocodile. You can’t stay out there after sunset. At dusk, the mosquitoes swarm. At night, they eat you alive.

5.

There was a time when I couldn’t say no to lovers. No, I don’t want to share your bed tonight. I can’t sleep before 3am and I’d rather spend those blank hours writing. No, I don’t want to spend half my day trying to study while you pretend this is a functional space. I can’t concentrate on raw philosophy when all you really want to do is send your hand creeping up my leg. I require solitude. I require my own space. I require a door that closes and locks from the inside. Five hundred a year and a room of one’s own. And I want and I need and I crave to write.

6.

The difference is what gives.

The last time I drove these roads was a month ago, on a warm Friday night when the sky was clear and the air was thick with insects. The high beams glanced off the ferns and the bark curled in ribbons down the trunks of ancient gums. Even in the night-time, the forest felt alive—whispering and laughing as the car sped through it. Tiny prickles of excitement ran up and down my arms. Bursting out of the heart of the concrete city and straight into the hills, the heady scent of earth and undergrowth was almost overpowering. Bush magic.

At some point the following day, I got caught on the edge of someone else’s story. Four days ago, when I drove through Toolangi, it got stuck in my throat again—a choked moment. It’s not my story; it’s not this story. It’s the corner of another story, an edge protruding from the mess that I scraped up against, that bent February out of shape.

Sometimes, when I’m driving alone down long stretches of empty road, when the moon is bright, the windows are open and the trees arch overhead, I switch off the headlights. It only takes a few seconds—just long enough for the dark to flood in, for my pupils to dilate, for the grey shadows to thicken and spread out into branches and hills as I speed by; just long enough to feel the leap in my chest, to take a sharp breath—for my senses to shift out of neutral. The adrenaline rush is like a reset button. Start again—now.

When I arrived at our property on Saturday night, there was a ring around the moon. Here, two years on, the black scales scarring the trees are wearing veils of green. I spent two days listening to my parents’ vinyl, wrestling with the dogs, studying the Malak Malak native title claim, watching the light dance across the kitchen table and sleeping for nine hours a night. I drove the tractor. I dug rocks out of the earth. I took the corner too sharply on the dirt bike and slid three metres face-first into the dust. A lizard scampered over my jeans. On Monday evening, Jethro-dog and I sat on a rock on the ridge behind the house and looked down into the forest, and I thought, if perpetually bruised shins are the highest price I pay for living this close to the edge of the world, then here they are and welcome! Perhaps that split-second glimpse into the red eye of the February dragon was enough to stop me stumbling sideways and pull the blindfold off. Perhaps I was never really wearing one. The fact is this: that for the first time since I can remember, I’m alone in the world and I feel alone, and I’ve never been so happy.

I thought about speeding cars and the hot summer sun, the wet leaves blowing in the back door, my empty stomach and the sand still in my shoes from four nights ago. And I wondered how far I could stretch myself – whether it might actually be possible to reach up and kiss the sky while still keeping my bare feet firmly on the ground, how much that might hurt, and how many layers of skin there are between what we say, what we hear, and the things we do with our bodies and our minds. And I thought about the subtle, pervasive nature of hibernation, of how to recognise the colour of my wings when they’re reflected back at me, and whether I ought to jump out while the water was still hot or stay in there until it cooled and risk the shivery, naked walk to my bedroom and nothing to wear when I got there.

And I thought: I will bury myself in this for the minute, for this moment, momentarily – because when things push at you from a hundred different directions, sometimes the only thing you can do is stop and let them crash in around you, wash over you, soak into you. So I stayed like that – in the steam and the foam and the million-miles-an-hour in my head – until the song faded and the echo of the heavy-dripping tap reminded me of all the things I have to do today.