I'm coming home...
I saw you the other day. It was a nice day, I was out and about, walking in the city, getting on and off trams, going into shops, sitting on a bench. It was the kind of day when every face that passed came from somewhere, was going somewhere else, no longer a mask but a personality. It was the kind of day when the light was kind, and the breeze was sugary, and there was time for looking, as I waited for a tram, as I walked in the park, as I passed you in the street.
You were loudly hailing a man in a bear suit in Bourke Street Mall, flinging your arms around his sagging velvety waist, screaming happily, because it was a beautiful day and your spirits were high and you'd just had a call from the boy you like. You were riding your bike down St Kilda Road, sunglasses on, intent only on the zing of asphalt beneath the wheel, thinking of getting home and ringing your best mate and having that beer. You were falling asleep on the tram to Smith Street, your hat pulled low, your teeth not aching for once, the drugs soft in your veins. You were doing your homework on Platform 6 at Flinders Street Station, frowning. You were paused on the corner opposite Parliament House, to look at the clouds rising above the facade. You were begging for change outside St Paul's. You were kissing your girlfriend in the Botanical Gardens, down by the lake, the whole afternoon ahead of you, her shoulders so crushable under your hands. You were buying poetry in the bookshop, wondering if $34.95 was too much to pay for something so beautiful but so brief.
In the ladies' lounge in Myer I saw you rubbing your sore feet. You and your friends were taking up the whole footpath in Russell Street and everyone who passed you was annoyed, and you didn't even notice. You were surreptitiously checking your breath before you went into an office block for a meeting. A man's shirt in the window of a shop in Little Collins caught your eye, and but you remembered that he broke up with you last week, and there will be no more gift-giving, and you hastened on. You were reading a script in a cafe in Degraves Lane, hoping someone would notice. In Elizabeth Street you were stomping down past the convenience stores and the accessories stores and the mobile-phone stores and the hair-product stores, full of rubbish you don't need, hating all of them and hating everyone who was getting in your way, because the whole day had been awful and you really just wanted to go home and take your pill. You were on your way to a hotel to see your lover, running late and hot in your business suit, hoping she wouldn't mind. You were missing your brother, still in the village on the other side of the world, wondering what he'd make of a place like this, hoping you'll get to show him one day when he saves enough money, when the paperwork is cleared. Because Melbourne is a wonderful city, and there is so much to see.
The buildings are so tall and fine, or crumbling and concrete and ugly, and the streets are easy to learn, and in the shops you can buy the riches of all the world, and here are thousands of people, your people, each one of them a capsule of thought and memory, all of them perfectly fitted into this bubble of a city between sea and hills, and though some of them don't know where they're going next, they will arrive there nonetheless.
I heard you say to your mate, the two of you in tracksuits and runners, swaggering down Swanston Street, "Nah, mate, nah, I wasn't f---ing rebuking you." I heard you say, unsmiling, leaning over a cafe table to your boyfriend, both of you beautiful young men, "Do you really want to know?" I heard you tell your friend, "That's the best thing, isn't it. A cup of tea. A cup of tea and a fried egg. Beautiful." I heard you whisper on the phone, "Don't be like that."
You were sitting on a bench, watching the crowds. Every song that came up on on your music player was perfect, and the world was bevelled with golden sunshine at the end of the afternoon. You watched everything. One person scowled at you; another smiled. Hello, you thought. Hello there.
From The Age.