On Hepburn Springs

T stops for an iced coffee and salt and vinegar chips.

It’s six-thirty; there is champagne in my body already.

I’m a thousand degrees, he says.

The service station reminds me of Bermagui.

When we get further from the city, so do the burn offs.

Bonnie is in a kennel.

I can’t think about her without feeling winded.

You got here quick, Dad says.

Local cider sweats in my hand.

Nothing’s open on a Monday.

Mixed grill.

Onion relish.

Roasted red peppers.

T tosses in a new bed.

Dawn.

Birds I’ve never heard before.

I wake up and don’t go walking.

There is an almond croissant.

Milky coffee.

There was a rabbit on the lawn when I woke up this morning.

Did you see it?

Liquorice.

Steak and pepper pie.

Beer -two.

Hot hot chips.

There is a house on the lake called The Lake House.

Its jetty is wide and low to the water.

I sit on it and imagine owning it.

For a moment nobody can tell me to move on.

A couple and a man in uniform appear.

We’re going to get married here, they say.

A waterfall.

Mossy rocks.

It falls so fast it hurts to be underneath.

I watch it sluice down stream.

Sulpher; mother nature’s minteral water.

We fill six bottles.

And walk through the bright blue Forget-Me-Nots.

Then the yellow buttercups Mum tells me we used to stick under our chins.

If it reflects yellow it means you like butter, Mum says.

I think of yellow bricks.

Hay bails.

Swollen dairy cows.

At four, the clouds gather.

A spa bath, I think, to sort out my city-tension.

Anne-Marie, the publican, calls while I’m bathing.

The jets swallow the ring of my iphone.

Outside are green and olive views.

They’re expecting us at seven, I say.

Dad tries to perfect the basic chords.

The verrandah wraps around.

I could live here, T says.

Anne-Marie doesn’t wear a mask.

Tells us to get the salt-cod fritters.

Then the lamb ribs.

Which are delicious.

A spring negroni, which tastes like winter.

Mum tips too much.

Dad doesn’t mind.

Rent relief is over.

I wake up and go walking.

The man is there again.

With a different couple this time.

Bits of my dream come back to me.

I won’t go into details.

But you, reader, were there.

Quilts of cloud.

I climb Thomas’ tower.

There is a teenage couple at the top.

I say sorry five times.

Three-hundred and sixty degree horizon.

I feel like the sky is just a lid.

And I am slipping around on the non-stick bottom of a casserole dish. 

Tap beer.

Do you think they know we’re from Melbourne, Myles says.

I could live here, T says.

More kindling.

Mazy Star plays from a UE boom.

Mum stirs tonic into gin.

Fat droplets of water fall down the chimney; I watch the flame wabble, part, dodge?

T has a stubborn migraine.

His XXXL hoodie is pulled over his knees.

I want to hold him but he has the hot-cold-sweats.

Heatstroke, we think.

I can smell the mozzarella on top of the lasagne.

I imagine it bubbling under the foil like a volcano.

I said, nah I’m not that hungry.

But really I can’t wait.

I wonder why I don’t say it how it is.

Why are there so many conversations happening in my head.

All of the time.

T says I need to practice listening.

A sponsored advertisment pops up on my feed.

Perhaps writing is a form of listening to the shapeless silence within, it says.

No you wouldn’t be very good at radio, Mum says.

T disagrees.

I am drinking a wine that tastes a lot like sherry.

I work out one glass is equivalent to the money I would earn cleaning the meat slicer or gift wrapping two different kinds of books (I got a new job).

My book is butterflied open to my left.

I think of the baguette I will later cut open for cheese.

It’s one by Helen Garner.

One Day I’ll Remember All This, it’s called.

Sure, though.

I hope so.