/lit/ - Literature

I saw them dancing all together in that room downstairs, over the carpet spinning silly, laughing. I remember that the children were with them at their knees, pulling on fingers and getting spun and lifted and adored. The camera flashed at the perfect second when they were hung in motion for capture. I saw that she was young and smiling, her blonde hair brightly against her vivid skin, and she was holding his curls in the corners of her mouth and eating at his ear, trapping him against her chest where he was laughing, pushing, caught in ticklish agony. There was life about. A birthday party. It breathed through screen and sliding doors. All the sounds went resoundly along the walls that kept them there together, of deep brown laminate, a fake wooden texture to say that this was home. And the moment bled slowly through the windows where outside it was night; bleeding all the yellow light that was warm inside house. Faces danced for the span of seconds past the glass panes hung on the darkness. Outside the air conditioner hummed in the empty echo space of the carport, long rhythmic whines came down to a tick and blared up again with a start when the temperature evaporated in the panting, shouting talk of them. It was moving, moving, time was moving along; and life began to saunter. So that she had a second to duck upstairs and the house exhaled when she opened the sliding door. I saw that the women were sitting behind the old bar they had, letting her carefully crawl along it as long she agreed to finally sit still. And outside it was hard not to follow, so he went out to take a piss in the garden with a cigarette in his mouth, and the boy was next to him doing the same. His father’s penis was much bigger, the moon flowed in their streams. Over the fence the cane seemed ready for harvest, the long strands of grass came so close to the yard that they nearly hung over. I said that night that I was never sure of where I was. I could not find the back of my skull. The cane was so tall, and the fence and the palms trees too, casting long shadows in the garden. I asked him to tell me that when we died we could all be together. He said Mate, we are all here right now. But Dad what if I’m just dreaming that we’re alive? You’ll see mate, we all have to die, but not for a long time yet.

I have been submitting stories to Island and Meanjin magazine since 2015 (they're the only ones I know). I have never been published but I love every bit of it and I get better every day. One day now. Anyway yes, but I have never spoken about it in a real conversation with people.