Life in the Snow
Brianna Bullen
She collects landmarks on her desk.
Novelty turned stagnant. Big Ben in a bauble, Trolltunga
in a dome: seventy snow-globes—Christmas collected. Student loan spending’s
organised in geographically aligned lines. Her last lover gave her the Great Wall as a parting gift, leaving with his
sense of humour. Her mother, Notre Dame Cathedral. A peace offering. She needs to call the woman, but the phone is always engaged when she tries to bridge their distance,
already wider than the Pacific. Skype sessions stilt their short words. The Yarra River loops around her
Melbourne; she looks into the CBD, cut-off behind her window, and disdain for its industrial influences. Ophelia—fragmented as Picasso—grows
aslant the brook rooted in Southbank. Why? She does not know. She has no control
over town planning. Notre Dame weighs in her palm. A café corner, hot chocolate spilling Euros, and an old man choking My Way out of an accordion in a kitsch postcard soundscape. Warm feelings kindle the moment, seen through memory’s frame—as she looks past its glass to her own. She once thought there was a crack in the window’s corner. Just a spider-web stain. Placing the bauble down, she idles away her day. Every minute, a flake falls down
within the light of her snow-globe never seeming to accumulate any
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