LYGON STREET

Written by Ella Katz

I sit in a cocoon of electronic buzz, yellow lights and lime seats. The hum holds me. It’s dark outside and bright inside.

Silent intimacy between strangers (shoulder to shoulder, bum to bum).

We rattle past bar windows where friends huddle into each other, against the night. Their conversations wade through warm wine. The Alderman’s vines stretch down to embrace dart smoke and air kisses that lin- ger. A city’s entanglement.

Public is out there.

But in here it’s private.

I’ve caught the number six tram most days this year. I map the human contours of my landscape on my way home.

Adulthood is not new to me. It’s almost been five years. The drinking/driving/voting line we draw between childhood and adulthood has always felt arbitrary. But tonight, it washes away entirely.

On a tram by myself. On a Sunday night. I put my feet on the seat opposite me. Not enough to make it dirty for the next person who’ll sit there, but just enough to feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t. A nod to little me.

I’m high on beer and mushies and music and friends.

The stories Holly told, and the giggles that rippled between Kev and Nadja—I carry them home proudly like a painting from kindergarten. Nonsensical yet precious: fridge magnet status.

I step into the cold air at Stewart Street and huddle into my red scarf. It has the same paisley patterns that mum wore in photo-albums from her twenties.

I wonder if adulthood seemed as far away for mum when she wore reds and purples and danced along to Cocteau Twins.

Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals swoop through me and set me on my way. Shoegaze/stargaze/melancholy/nostalgia. More precious nonsense.

Little me would be in awe of my independence. My eyeliner, my beer-drinking, my blue-tooth headphones. All things that have slipped from novelty to normal in the past half-decade.

In the years when bellies stuck out with pride, Sunday nights meant Shrek pj’s hanging in front of the fire- place. Warm green cotton (polyester?) for Ethan and I to slip into after baths.

I smile. Will I always carry a part of her with me? Where does mum stop and where do I start? An umbilical cord of memories.

At rockpools, Mum would stare at the critters with me. She would crouch, steadying my fidgety legs. “If you keep still, you’ll notice all the life moving around you”.

I stand on the corner of Albion Street and I’m still. I feel a yearning—half warm, half ache—for the time when adulthood was a fantasy.

I’ve seen all the critters of Lygon Street tonight.