The Spoon

Eli Narev

This afternoon at half-past three I saw myself as I made tea Through the bright, distinctive bend Of a coffee spoon’s back end.

The word I use is not ‘reflection’ Rather some kind of projection Of a person yet to blossom Like a cracking boll of cotton.

Grinning, silver-gilded through The cutlery— as spectres do— Appeared myself at fifty-five Devoid of life but quite alive.

My contemporary body (The corporeal and un-contorted) Shuddered at the impure image Of this frightful, fated visage.

Why should I start, if such a face Would— in two scores— be commonplace? Has he not lived my lives foreseen? Do I not yearn for where he’s been?

Through the flatware, our fates merging All his history’s roads diverging Avenues of self-expression, Glamour; lust— tasteful obsession.

I marvelled at his paths’ pearlescence All potential gains and lessons Before me, slews of selves refracting To prismatic smithereens.

Perhaps I would be better suited To a life seated and suited. Thoughts on tap but thinking muted— Madcap dreams left spayed and neutered.

Everyone I’ve Ever Loved

Author: Tilda Njoo

Noah shook her head and sparks leapt off the ends of her hair. I could see them falling from across the room. They fell like fireworks and the cold in the air snuffed them out before they reached her shoes.

The girl speaking with Noah couldn’t see them. She was distracted by something, her mind eating up everything else in the room but Noah. The girl’s friends were gathered around the kitchen, talking to a boy. Her boy. The room held little bundles of people, all of them wishing to be in the next bundle over. But Noah didn’t seem to notice.

She was never a good conversationalist. I could recite just about every conversation we’d ever had, they felt so nice, but that doesn’t mean she was good at conversation. She hid this fact by sipping her drink mid-sentence, relishing in the pauses this created. Anything to prolong her train of thought, anything to keep the other person mesmerised by her words. From across the room I could almost see the perspiration on her upper lip as she tried to make her language something magical. She was always too forced; too obvious; too far away from the person opposite. Someone should tell her that.

Still, the room orbited around her nucleus. Still, it seemed like the party was pulsing for her. Sitting by myself, on a fraying couch at the frayed edges, it seemed as if each post-teen, pre-adult, Converse-clad person in the room was a prop to Noah’s play. They greyed in comparison.

Now, the girl was training her eyes towards the boy, purposefully turning ignorant to Noah. She’d catch on soon; when she reached the end of her sentence. She’d catch on. It’s not like she couldn’t read people. I watched as, on cue, she let her last phrase fall out of her mouth. It lay squirming between them on the floor; a gap in the conversation.

The girl looked down, realising what Noah had done. She smiled gratefully at her before running over to her boy. He grinned smugly as she approached, knowing he could pull the girl across the room just by standing in it. And then Noah just stood there next to the fireplace, not even bothering to pretend that she hadn’t been left alone. I watched as her head circled the room, lazily. The sparks lit up slower this time, fizzing out as they fell past her shoulders. Her nonchalance was suffocating. She would only ever notice other people retrospectively, when she was finished with her own thoughts.

The first time we met it had been hot; the sky was the kind of heavy that smothered any suggestion of romance or affection and still I had stared at her. Her hair was longer then, down to her waist, and it lit up as she circled through the school yard. She was placed next to me in class. When she looked at me, I felt myself being swallowed up by the wall behind me. The first time she spoke to me, it was to ask how to spell the word ‘disintegrate.’ D-i-s-i-n-t-e-g-r-a-t-e, I had replied. Di-sin-te-grate, she had said back, placing emphasis on sin. And then she laughed her strange, hollow laugh and our descent into romance began.

By the time that her love for me had started filtering through the layers of her mind, my love for her had already begun pooling at my feet. It leaked through the doors of her dad’s car as we drove over the speed limit down the highway, and my parents could smell it on me as I sat down to dinner each night. Walking through the city to go to the movies, or to the shops, she would hide our clasped hands behind her back. My heart swelled at our secret. When my desire to share us with the world got too much to bear I would draw the outline of her mother’s dress, of her makeup brushes, of her bed frame. One time, my art teacher stood behind me as I drew.

“Oh Abigail! How wonderfully violent,” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes at another tortured teenager in love. Three months into knowing Noah, I had memorised her moods, the times of day she liked to be alone, the moments before she retreated. I loathed those stretches of retreat, where her eyes glazed over and her mind shut itself off to the world. But I would persist; I stayed watching her and talking to her and touching her until she closed off completely and I could taste my aloneness. That’s what defeated us in the end; what di-sin-tegrated us. My aloneness. Her aloofness.

Eight months later and Noah was standing by the fireplace, her phone open to the notes app. I could tell by the way that she was typing and then pausing, typing and then pausing. She was writing a poem. It would go like -

My parents died today Or so my empty house said. Mother hanging in the laundry And Father facedown on the bed.

Or perhaps -

The Wind howled and roared at the sea and the Sea roared back.

Later that night, she would sit at the edge of her bed, her hair glowing. She would have her phone on one knee and her notebook on the other, and she would copy the poem down under today’s date. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t do that anymore. I suppose it didn’t matter where she kept her poems. They weren’t any good now that they weren’t about me.

Noah’s Phone App Poetry

By Tilda Njoo

Noah and the tattooist

we hold an indifference to each other’s lives, the tattooist and i. he held my arm and he held my gaze and still, he remained indifferent.

Noah in love

We drove over the speed limit and I thought of religion. We skipped a song (twice) and I thought of you (twice).

Noah by the sea

moses and i have heard of seas splitting like an arrow down the middle of a party at the end is -

at the end is a pair of dead rabbits, two drowned elephants and brown eyes. glazed, like a ham.

Noah in love, part 2

bad poetry is made worse with the overuse of lowercase / denial of uppercase.

Noah in shower

Tonight in the shower I could breathe my own name. I breathed out first.

n - o.

I held my breath; there, at the pit of my stomach, and I waited for my brain to play your name So many times over that it lost all meaning.

It’s complicated.

Anonymous

If I had a dime for every time you’ve called me stupid, I’d be a millionaire by now. If I had a dime for every time I’ve believed you since, I’d be a billionaire by now.

But I know you never meant it, that it was all just pent up frustration: you’ve got so much shit going on in your own life, your love was just lost in translation.

Vivid memories of me sitting in your lap by the bookshelf in the corridor upstairs: you read me all my favourite childhood stories. I felt so secure, so protected, always without a care.

But you changed all of a sudden… Mummy… what did I do wrong? Since when did everything I do make it so difficult for us to get along?

You’ve never had the intention to hurt me, or so I think… because that’s not what parents do, right?

Parents are supposed to love, supposed to nurture, supposed to show their children that they can conquer all, supposed to help them dream up a wild future – or, at least, that’s what I’ve been told.

But if that’s the case…

Why did you make me feel so unlovable, so burdensome, so powerless, so futureless? You pushed me to be the best out in the world, but made me feel so insignificant at home.

Home: where I should have felt safest, but I found myself no longer wanting to go back, trying to find any excuse to stay out, in fear of your unpredictable wrath.

I know you didn’t mean it, and you probably don’t know to this day, that the bumpy marks on my wrist, were my attempts at feeling okay.

When you saw the fresh cuts, you shrieked at me, “YOU DAMNED UNGRATEFUL FOOL!” But all I wanted you to see was past my skin, the lashes on my heart made by you.

Again, I understand, you tried the best you ever could, that the version of love you now show me, is the only love you ever understood.

Mother, now I ask only one thing: please, reconsider your hurtful behaviour. Maybe then you’ll finally understand why I ran away from you as a teenager.

All that seems left of my crippled soul is a lifeless, hard, thick callus. But I’m sure that under it all there’s still my childish, undying love for

you.

*N.B. this piece from the Woroni archives