by Catherine Zhou
I.
Past the end of the line. Pillars rising garishly, whiteness made to look coloured over the years. Green space (third space) between roads running into each other. Benches in memory of. Suits stealing lunchtimes. We walked up as the exhibitions were changing. The more directionless, the more moneyed. Every curvature something like an oasis begging to be lived in. Monument after monument. A garden just for roses. The turn, just before the start of the toll, behind which everything was guarded. That something made in the image of a monarchic luxury: a home in a workplace in a home. They love something as intact as it can be. Preserved in memory of a bygone century. Coloniality to move toward, then to appear unexpectedly, like a surprise, as something they didn’t remember but was always there.
II.
It was something untamed because we never gardened or watered or grew anything worthy of eating. It was something ours but not ours because our kitchen adjoined theirs and they’d trim anything too overgrown. I thought we had it all because we didn’t live on top of each other like everyone we knew. I learned to ride a bike on the unevenness of avoiding gutters. Falling from attempts to climb into windows or to manually push up the garage door. In playgrounds yours is lesser for the fact of sharing. You pull up a plan to compare the surface area of your lives. In other places you don’t see the walls until they’re right in front of you. The statue outside, chiming. The door hidden behind the ferns. The absence of boundaries. You remind yourself that it has never been hard for you in the same way. The absence of that like a well.
III.
A station named after a place. Summer isn’t over yet. You have to ask to be let in and shown the way to go. Between a train line and a church. Food and wine. They love a self-sufficient garden. They call it Lombardic Romanesque. A pool there for the looking. A beautiful thing to stand around. Space which makes it smaller from afar and bigger at the edge. Historical importance / aesthetic characteristics. Somewhere to be entertained, just beyond the built-up waste of the living. There is singing and dancing. There is a settling. The dark canopy. The aimlessness of an exit. The goodbyes on the porch. The waiting and the going. The return to closed shopfronts. The lope back. A phone dying. A long way to go. A driveway not to drive up, but to walk, slowly, back home.
Catherine Zhou is a lawyer, writer and researcher living and working on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal Peoples.
Hyades Magazine 