Angler’s Bay, 2036
Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.
Mary Oliver
Christmas came and went again
but we were still pale-faced and lost
in the wake of Finn, the house a cave
we drifted through and meals empty
of all ritual. We just sat mute, moving
the food around our plates for a decent
interval before resuming a slow retreat,
each towing the weight of separate griefs;
our gestures slow and deliberate
like boats overloaded with disbelief.
For days, how many I can’t say,
I curled up in my sister’s bed,
my face turned to the wall.
I felt, if anything, shell-peeled,
snail-raw; antennae retracted inside
my head to avoid the sea’s dark flow
and ebb. And no one could reach me;
not my mother whose words betrayed
the thick furred tail of a valium sleep.
Not Dad, whose hands shook terribly
(he could scarcely hold a mug of tea).
His heart had been beating too rapidly.
A weak ventricle, the doctors claimed.
Sometimes he stood outside my door
and said flat-voiced
—North, let me in.
But I wouldn’t let anyone in
except Rosie, who curled up
on my bed and slept. The gulls’
injurious squawks and the waves’
harsh music on the shore formed
a dull rendition of a musical score
I tried hard to erase. Only thrash
bands infiltrated. The Plastic Dead,
Synthetic Poodles; rebel groups
with guttural chic. Their discordant
noise subdued my grief so I couldn’t
hear it scratch and paw at the doors
and windows anymore.
Drugs were an efficient anaesthetic
to numb the sharp incisions of mourning,
which sank its fangs in without warning.
Cello smuggled Pipe Dreams in.
My folks encouraged her to visit
in the hope that she just might elicit
some sort of response from me, I think.
Cello, who knew nothing at all about grief.
This girl who had never lost anything more
than a bangle from the Surf Chick store.
Sometimes we watched a 3DV. I slept
through quite a few of these. Anything
to distract me from the ghost of Finn,
the amphibian trace of this absent twin
who would not die, despite drowning.
Perhaps it was Cello’s designer genes
or a natural capacity to shrug things
off. But after the shock of losing Finn,
Cello seemed to recover too quickly.
—Oh my God, Mrs. Croft. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t met Jack, Finn would still be here.
I’m really, really so sorry.
—It’s okay, Cello, my mother said,
a mechanical hand patting Cello’s head,
her voice as grey as wet cement.
It’s no one’s fault. It just happened.
But Cello’s shoulders had a gorgeous slope.
Pain touched them lightly, then slid off.
Celebrity pole dancing was hot that year,
with daily comps on iTV that Cello
followed religiously.
—So, North, who do you think will win?
The Gyro Girls or The Sugar Twins?
She paraded her latest lingerie,
coral pink with a silver trim.
Exotic as a hybrid bird, she twirled
around my unmade bed. I exhaled
smoke from my last joint, watched it
curl and wreath beneath the door.
Before Cello left I asked for more.
—Cello, said my father, no more weed!
—Sorry, said Cello, just trying to help.
—Well, think, Cello! Just use your head!
In the hall outside my small refuge,
I heard Cello sigh and scuff the boards,
heard her footsteps clatter, then recede.
I shook my empty Pipe Dream packet,
feeling invisible as a ghost half-glimpsed.
I’d been thinking a lot about death lately
in clinical detail, like a science project.
But something always prevented me,
some angel guide who barred the way.
I raged against it the way a horse resists
the bit that restrains it from the cliff.
Cello came empty-handed next day.
—No, she said. Don’t ask me again.
Without drugs, the pain of grief
broke through like a battering ram
and trampled me. The air was sharp.
It hurt to inhale. I surveyed my room
in the light of day: Pipe Dream packs,
soiled clothes and ash. If I opened
a window the sea rushed in. If I kept
it closed I couldn’t breathe. My tears
fell at last with a rancid scent, as if
held too long in the bowels of me.
But some glitch overrode Cello’s
chemistry that day.
—North, she said. God, I’m so sorry.
She put down her zine and she just
held me.
Returning to school was like drowning
again. Pain in my sternum as I entered
it, a numbness in my extremities
as if gliding through virtual reality
or the terrain of a new country.
The bell remote, voices off pitch
and too raucous. I clutched my bag
close to my chest, a teen girl from
a teen movie. Friends were attentive
but inept at grief. We were just fifteen.
Angler’s Bay gave Finn a memorial.
On the town hall steps were flowers
and cards from families I had never met.
I took the long way around. The stench
of chrysanthemums made me retch.
My parents were too landlocked in grief
to consider Finn might have chosen this.
No rationale for her vanishing was ever
offered except common sense. Everyone
assumed her dead. While I was the one
who had turned my head, no blame
was assigned, though I carried it.
Sometimes I wished they’d just say it.
Perhaps a wave swept her off that ledge.
Maybe she jumped. It scarce mattered.
So I strove for closure like the final note
of a requiem but somehow closure
never came. Just the brutal assault
of the sun each day.
Perhaps if the sea had washed her up
or the waves had brought her body in.
But the sea refused to yield anything.
My left arm ached with Finn’s phantom
weight. The bruise she left on my wrist
remained. Small wounds clamoured
through stiff red lips but no one heard
them except for me. On moonlit nights
she called to me; rotten, putrescent.
I’d run to the beach and scan the sea
till someone came and brought me in.
Often I woke in a great panic, gasping
for air as if still drowning.
And what of Jack? Elusive
as a fox and as hard to track.
He wouldn’t answer my calls
or just hung up. And he left
town not long after that.
His mother phoned mine
and Mum told me. —Jack’s enrolled in the Academy
of Boat Building. In Tassie,
said Mum. It’s for the best…
A bit of a break won’t hurt anyone.
The wounds reopened,
dark and wet.