-Can I have another copy of the form?

-But doesn't your husband have the form?

-Yes, but we need to fill it out separately. I didn't want to ask him, because then we would end up doing this together.

- Isn't that a bit... it's your application for a parenting license.// I would have thought he could give you your own copy and allow you to fill it out.

-I didn't want to bother him.

-But you know, you ask me for the form, I have just one copy left, I have to request another copy. They will ask for details.

-// I didn't realise, I'm sorry.

-We need to talk about it.

-I'm sorry, I'll ask my husband for his form and make a copy myself.

-But it was my copy that you asked for.

-I didn't realize it was difficult. I will make my own copy. I can take his for a short time, it needn't bother him too much.

-But perhaps it is better if you fill it out together.

-//

-I think it is important that you tell me why you don't want to.

-It's not the recommended method!

-Well, the recommended method is not the only method. There are adapted methods, for certain cases.

-For what cases? No one said that, I've never been told!

-This is my job, not yours. Everyone is different.

-Different! //And if we do that, won't you have to make a report?

-//Your job is just to focus on the future. And I'd like to help, I think you know that. So let's talk about how you can ask. Let's talk about the adapted methods.

Dear Doctor,

I woke up in time for our appointment and decided to spend that time walking through the reserve to A's house, rather than waiting for C to drive me later on. C assured me she could still follow with my case. I took out hat, gloves, scarf, donned thermals and my jeans. I kissed the baby goodbye and the baby gave me the sign language for 'more' - two hands together, then pulled quickly apart. Her mothers were working on porridge as I left.

It's so unrepresentative, what I'll tell you when I return. I walked through the reserve as the frost was starting to melt. I used my GPS and knew I couldn't lose myself, even when I left the track and followed animal trails through the banksia. I came up the first crest of the hill onto a mob of kangaroos, stopped before they startled, then had to go closer of course, just to see. Soon they scattered - or most did - but not very far. When I looked to my left I saw that some were even closer now, evaluating me. Perhaps they were habituated to human company, looking for food. I turned back the way I came.

What is it, what is it, why am I writing this, these messages? Since you went under the new provider there's no exchange of papers. I read what I can to you, if I wish to spend our time that way, and you leave with just your handwritten notes in my file. I leave at fifty minutes; you leave at sixty after updating the notes, which are checked at the door, as you've told me. It reminds me of A's wedding, how afterwards the silhouette of the pavilion was dismantled, and I watched it coming down pillar by pillar. Or a similar scene, a few years later - I sat at a window with Bella as the huge Norfolk pine was felled in Eaves Park. Not dramatically, with one cut, but piece by piece, beginning at the top. Bella chirruped in the back of her throat, her best bird call, as if that man in the sling was the most fearsome of bird gods, and he must now be appeased. He crept down the tree, vanishing it as he went. We knew, Bella and I, that soon he would be loosed upon the ground, and what would he do then with his vanishing?

-

I understand it was necessary, the transition - necessary if you wanted to keep your work permit.

got form

"It’s a somewhat doggerel kind of rhyme which might well have been a forgotten memory of the Cravan translation. It was actually written to go to the tune of a popular song that got in my head and which I couldn’t exorcize in any other way — ‘Reunited’ — do you know that song?"

"Herb has remained a constant in "Peaches & Herb" since its creation in 1966, while six consecutive women have filled the role of "Peaches.""

sweetly sweetly. bottle the creeping. press it through the walls then I'll

withdraw my blurry hands. as I pull them back their outlines

become united and swollen, the outlines of my hands. anthem.

dog scuttles out from under the cot,

comes to lick them all over. red dog darling, cooling.

I'll make biscuits with my hands the size of loaves 

and dry them on the roof. if I ever can get away from your attentions.

*

autumn. who is that man with the heavy bag? what is inside the bag? 
pay attention to him because his behavior does not seem right.

red dog darling, warming, what is inside the bag? when we wake

we wake into a revocation. not now three outlines for each hand

but eight. the outlines are normal in size. who is that man?

wait for his debarkation. dog darling. we can't follow him where 
the two-way street goes one-way so we’ll swing away
(in the morning) 
we'll swing away

promontory

but at home it was always at night, never in the morning. while she was drifting a

man in a blue swandri came along and stopped by the toilet. he unzipped his zip.

the cave opened up into sunlight - and it was full of butterflies, the size of hands,

she moved forward, bringing her chest in to her knees, disturbing the

torsoes, mobile in the silence. everything was shining, it was just a bath,

there was nothing stupid about it. the cliffs were sheets of hanging stuff, isinglass

crisped into land forms. “that’s embarrassing,” he said, and tucked himself in.

now there would be no problem fitting her in with the dentist. kiwis cried out

in the bush, and cold came up through her wet feet. she exchanged the shoes

for a pair of white crocs, taking the first of the thirty pairs. it was  over

very quickly. there was nowhere in her mouth for tartar to collect.

together they stroked the dust away from the lower porcelain.

ugh. ugh. ugh. overexposed. zap.

full moon in the orangerie

I'm walking to the gates, fast,
breathing hard & letting
my mobile phone ring

The problem was I was making the dog anxious. Whether the dog had been anxious before my arrival was unclear, but certainly all my positive reinforcement of the dog’s anxious behaviours had, since my arrival, dramatically increased that anxiety. Every time the dog sought out my hand my hand responded. When the dog whined, my hand responded. When the dog came to my face to wake me in the mornings, alternately gnashing at a chunk of lego, whining, and slobbering at my mouth or eyes – I patted, I crooned, I soothed. The dog accepted the soothing, was calmed for a short while, and then withdrew. He would back away to sit just slightly out of reach, or lie down, then resume the gnashing and whining. If I failed to respond he would reach up with a paw to prod insistently at my arm or leg.

Now the anxiety was spreading to the whole family: the six year old developed the habit of twisting his forelock into a tangled, ratty knot, then pulling at the knot till hairs came out. The toddler’s progress towards toilet training had ceased. The babe in the womb had suddenly turned breach and now had a foot stuck against the mother’s urethra, making urination an ever-present urge for her, one that was painfully difficult to meet.

I had a looming sense of myself as firmly implicated, and though conversations at mealtimes remained gentle enough and apparently aimless, the air of frustration was hard to miss. There was speculation about sending the dog away, back to the kennels of its origin – just for a time. And there was light conversation about the rudiments of behaviorism – conversation that between two small animal vets seemed a little too easy, as when two brain surgeons on a medical drama pause to offer each other definitions of ‘stroke’ and ‘aneurysm’.

No. Sit. Drop. Good dog. Okay. I will keep my hand by my side. Grief is a problematic habit. Things to praise: quiet independence; the prone position; non-response to food scraps and to the toddler’s squawks and clamberings.  The dog improves.

You’re moving quickly in the mirror’s bevelled edge, accomplishing something in there. It’s something to do with the arrangement of the room. The angle of the walls, or how much airspace there is for expansion and contraction. Arrangements for insulation: firm packed to dampen reverberations, or just muffled with that loose, itchy, glassy fill.

I meant to come and pack my bag in this room but when I enter I see the dog, lying awake in the dark beneath the empty cot. I don’t want to turn on the light. Whatever you’re doing in the edge of the mirror I’m not going to catch it, not going to see it or get it, no matter where I stand. I leave the light off, go to the wall and sit there for a while, on the pile of my clothes. 

a hen croons in the chookhouse & the sound is so itchy, rising - & rising the smell of possum skins hung up on nails to dry; dust and birdshit caked on the beams of the mezzanine floor; & there's the old pram the bantam got round in, paint flaking off the white cane.

but now by the chookhouse in the winter sun fifteen kids pass the parcel. a freddo frog in every layer, mother at the cd player, eagling for who misses out. and one short shorn redhead is wandering the garden - sees the circle, looks curious, wanders on. like there's no recognition that she's of the same breed. gets caught up in tearing dried seedheads from the grass.

there I am taking a position on something, pushing against it. I dissolve. arm through the wall, keep on going. hey mr pharmacist. hello. I came through the door to see you. I'm the only one in here. there's some part of your shape in the bevelled edge of the mirror, moving. there's a voice saying quite clearly - well, break a leg. which leg? or there's the voice in diagnosis: is it the same here as with other people? which other people? all these parts have three or more outlines. I can't get a fix.

but here's something: sharing the couch with a grieving labrador. he spasms continuously in his sleep. then in the morning he pushes my hand awake, needs contact, licks it awake, needs moving, conscious contact and comfort. all day when I walk from room to room or out into the garden he's there, following, anticipating, nudging or leaning against my legs. when I sit he's there, nudging himself under my hand, chewing at something fretfully. so, my hand is there. the dog is there and my hand is there. the owner is frustrated and worried, the kids fall over and hit their heads, the next meal is planned and executed, the baby moves down in the pelvis. here is my hand, the only part here, the position. it's singular. it rests.

Then there was Cheezel, who said she didn't care if they called her Cheezel. WHY WOULD you do that to your hair? they asked, and the answer was you SHOULDN'T. It was just for attention, it was STUPID, and she needed to know. The hair was bleached, and dyed black, then bleached again, and dyed orange, and covered with spray and gel, then teased up and slept in for a week or three without further attention. Some parts were cheezel-coloured, but others were a murky grey-green. Now Cheezel had mostly stopped going to classes. We had no other friends so we would meet at lunchtimes, we would exchange mix tapes, and she would speak adoringly about Pencil, whose initials were HB. We weighed up the evidence that he knew or didn't know she existed, and thought about possible pathways for contact. We also made assessments of who was or was not certifiably FITH: Fucked In The Head. Word was that Cheezel's real father was her mother's brother, so she was definitely FITH. Pencil, who had been the Coppertone Kid as a toddler with his glowing auburn curls and dimpled bottom presented to the world, was probably definitely FITH as well.

One afternoon we left school and walked along K Rd to go through all the opshops. I always spent any pocket money I had on lunches I'd forgotten to make, or on replacement 10-ride passes when I'd lost the one my parents paid for, so I bought nothing. Cheezel bought some clothes that I would never have thought of wearing. Then we went down Ponsonby Rd, and stopped in a shop full of baby clothes. The clothes were tiny, and French, all white. It was $40 for a little cardigan. I thought I'd want to tell my mother about this shop but I knew I wouldn't be able to, because I was supposed to be in school, and because I knew we would not be buying those kinds of things for our baby.

The woman asked us if we were supposed to be in school, and we said no, we'd just been on a trip and had the afternoon off, and then we left. Cheezel said we should go around to visit Sana, who lived not so far away and perhaps was also not at school today - Sana was very mature, the most mature and maternal of all of our friends, though she hadn't kept in touch much since she'd changed schools. She had a pair of female mice, and she kept their cage scrupulously clean and adorned with limbs from the Barbie collection of her childhood. Usually Sana did what she liked and no one seemed much to mind, so there was a good chance she would be at home.

It turned out to be further than we'd thought to her house, but Cheezel was not interested in turning back.  We arrived and knocked on the door to the enclosed verandah. There was a huge plastic police dog positioned by the window, but Cheezel tried the door anyway. Should we? I asked. Often, Cheezel said, Sana's family would leave the verandah unlocked and lock the internal door instead. So we could go in and leave a note by the internal door. We opened it and went in. The internal door was standing open. Had they been robbed? I wondered. No, said Cheezel, probably it was just forgetfulness. Anyway, now we could write our note and leave it right in Sana's bedroom, surprise her.

We were crouched by the police dog writing the note when Sana's mother, cabaret dancer and heavy drinker, came storming out in her dressing gown, asking who the fuck we were and what the fuck we thought we were doing. We swiftly explained. She was shaking and squinting and her dressing gown was falling open at the top. And would it be all right, asked Cheezel, if we just finished the note and put it in Sana's room? FINE, said the mother and went back inside holding her head.

It took us a while to finish the note, because we wanted it to be funny. Somehow we were inside at the coffee table working on it when Sana's mother came out and yelled at us again. She seemed to have forgotten saying it was okay. We left. Cheezel seemed almost more cheerful than when we'd arrived.

Sana's place wasn't so far from Cheezel's place but to get home I had to go back past the school and to my own bus stop up on Symonds St. It was freezing. By the time I got to K Rd school had been over for ages, it was nearly dark, and everyone except the winos had long gone home.

digging the toes down to the hard sand and finding there more tide rushing in, more of the loosening and swirling away.

(vaguely) that's my narcissism playing up.

I'll do this - have her back under my hand. looking for the sacrospinalis, their balance, and finding only one sheath of muscle, one arch of a coil, ready to go. little almond eyes, all blister and no infection.

having done everything and found it replicated itself into everything to be done, still the thing isn't done. I look at another thing and find it is focused replete giving formful. I look at this thing and it is blurry and fades out before i can fix my eyes on it. where's its centre? it gestures towards. when is it's thought from? 1991. it falls over and groans.

tea, tea. less seriously. seriously less seriously. ok.

waking into confusion and flatness. painful eyes. how to continue today? how to work?

a series of permissions. tea, weetbix if there are any, strawberries. wear a better t-shirt. wear a cardigan. stretch. do the admin, but do it later. make a list now and do it later. water the plants, taking note of the green, the light, the beautiful tablecloth. where is my sister? will she forget me? how will I remember the things I have to do before I leave and how will I finish promises?

strawberries first, tea. stretch. it's not too late. it never is too late quite. someone who listens will be kind, and that is the person you talk to. Strawberries, tea.

holding pattern

what I miss about it, not consciously but gapingly, is the experience of emptiness as a sacred state, a cherished and valued state.

now I'm back at hatred again, the hatred of forgetfulness, dumbness, passivity, hatred of being a receiver, a follower, of the clamoring listening and the attendant inability to retain, the patternless waiting, gaping, gaping, the terrible void and the degradation and worthlessness that seem inherent to the state.

but I want to write down to remember: I was a follower, sought after and protected, and I had a place. And the quality of my forgetting was loved, the clarity of my reception and my given emptiness, silence, utterly open. night after night. by one, by several, by many.