Impressions of Sydney
I sit on the bus. I do this a lot. I do this too much. I just buy a ticket and ride until I get back to my stop. Sometimes I keep going even after that, staring through the window, hands in my lap. Watching. That’s all. It’s not nearly enough. I watch at the city as she moves and breathes and, sometimes, while she turns fitfully in her sleep. I see her nightmares even when she doesn’t.
And this is how I hold my relationship. I’m a voyeur. I stare at her imperfect skin and feel the words to make her mine sticking in my throat and dying stillborn. I desperately want to seduce her but I just can’t. My charms are cheap and broken, not nearly enough for a glamour girl of golden jewelry and long black evening dresses. So here I sit, held aloft on a single ray of light, a dust mote in a cathedral, sometimes gritting my teeth and sometimes crying to myself, silently. The city’s sleeping and I’d be loathe to wake her.
I think I love her. I don’t know if she loves me. I don’t think so. I don’t think she loves anyone. She’s arrogant and capricious, insincere and cruel. Her hunger is endless. I think she just eats without ever stopping to think how it tastes, or if she should save something for later. It’s compelling to watch. It’s like jackals feeding.
But then, when the feeding stops and she’s wiped her mouth, she seems to pause for a moment. I can see her smiling. Alive with her own culture and breathing her own perfume she’s savagely beautiful, like an old, battle scarred lion. I decide I really do love her and as the bus stops at traffic lights, her heart paused between beats, I can sense the stillness and terrible gnawing sadness just below the surface. It bubbles up when the clamour stops and the heart is still. That’s when she’s beautiful. When she has time to reflect. Next to the bus, a young couple in a car take a moment to embrace.
It begins to rain. The city churns and melts. My stop is next and as I rise to wait for the doors to open, head down, I sense a presence watching me. She’s young, like me, and I feel I recognise her. She sits next to me, silently. I suddenly realise what it is I recognise. She has the same look I have. She drinks from the same chalice - she rides the bus too. We nod in understanding and I decide not to take the stop. We disappear together in to the city’s guts and, just for a moment, I think I hear her chuckle.
