Trick Question

Marie O’Rourke

Watching. Waiting. Alert. Posed and poised. Conscious, perhaps, that someone watches you, too?

My eyes trace your elegant curves: ear, to neck, to spine, to tail. I stall, and here, the first discomfort — I dare not openly label it deception. A tail that seems to fall straight down, a shadow telling the wrong story, for stepping to the side, forward, angling my head, a generous hooked end is revealed. I fixate on that tail, its truth both curved and straight in a world all trick-of-the-light and talking shadows.

Edging closer, another secret revealed: that you are only half; that you rely on a circle of silvered glass to make sense of what or who you might be. Half a body. Meticulously carved, faithful in every detail, but unbalancing too. I stare into your immovable, unreadable eyes. I note the grace and beauty of your features, the determined set of jaw, the strongly arched back, your firmly planted feet. I would reach and touch but resist, reluctant to shatter the illusion of silken fur atop twitching musculature. Fingernails catching on tiny indentations in carved resin — the opposite of softness and warmth — would undo me. When facts stare me in the face I’m always first to turn away.

Stepping back I see the final deceit. The mirror now tells a completely different story, casts another form onto the space at my feet: the curved cat back and ears, the dangling tail, suddenly transformed into a rabbit ringed in a halo of light. Watchwaiting, waitwatching; catrabbit, rabbitcat.

You watch and wait and judge me too. See half of a carefully constructed replica. Or perhaps, now, merely the shadow I cast. Stand in a different position, shift the angle of the lights. Everything is/nothing is true.

My phone vibrates. I skim read the latest message from my lawyer.

Author’s note

My piece was inspired by Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s Watching, waiting, a seemingly simple sculpture which somehow told a different ‘story’ when viewed from different angles. At this time, I was in the final stages of separation from my husband and the work prompted similar questions to the process we were engaged in, distilling our 25 year relationship into numbers on a spreadsheet. In my play of language and imagery I hoped to capture a complex and confounding situation unable to be reconciled through an either/or view of the world. Instead, it insists on the also/and, just as Abdullah’s sculpture does

Marie O’Rourke is a West Australian writer of personal essay and memoir. She completed a PhD at Curtin University, exploring the multiplicity and mutability of memory, identity and the essay genre and taught across Curtin’s creative writing, professional writing and literary studies programs for six years. Marie’s work has been published in national and international journals including a/b, Essay Daily, Life Writing, Meanjin, New Writing and Westerly. Her manuscript, Kintsugi, was shortlisted for the 2022 Hungerford Award and will be published by Fremantle Press in 2024.

洪荒陈述 宫倩

这里有火舌的舞蹈 录在 纸板上的咬痕

犹如藕叶筛过的月光 树木沉吟着 把心事转进 年轮古老的留声机 一圈一圈

溪水不断地变换着调性， 试着嗓音，

时而惊诧于闪电的提示 时而疑惑于细风的劝谏 密雨点，稀雨点

皴、擦、点、染 原是我的绝活儿 烘、破、泼、积 是我每天的太极 五彩云 擦红的面颊 鹅卵石 漂白的牙齿 朽木桩 皴皱的手臂 黑雨点、白雨点

时间在这里打了个趔趄

乱石因此收集它脚步的凌乱 山峦，在千百次捶打下 延展到遥远的地平线 河水揉搓着自己的影子 云雾一遍遍擦拭河面 不厌其烦

轻雨点、重雨点

这个古老的故事 太短，没有开始 太长，远看不到结束 全部都清楚展示了 只邀你的一点共振 给你头上一个爆栗 嘀嗒、嘀嗒 此雨点、彼雨点