Australian Love Stories by Cate Kennedy Read Free Book Online

fussed over it, patting it into ten syllable lines, and though it refused to rhyme she felt she’d found something better in herself.

    Striding over the grass, leaving behind
    your polished old ute, ukulele slung
    loosely over one arm, in the other
    a picnic basket, a warm blanket rolled.
    We’ve some hours here at midlife, no more, no
    tomorrow together, nor yesterday.
    Through smoke-light passing over the mountain,
    I skip like I’m a carefree child again,
    bringing some humble, half transformed objects,
    for you to test, to bite like a jeweller,
    to find a measure of truth, and if not
    a wholesome rebuke and a guiding word.

    But first, I’ll listen to your homemade songs
    my head on the ground, my eyes toward sky
    while your fingers pick keen melodies from string;
    each note sawing the air, the earth, our selves.
    By now your hands have cradled babies, built
    houses, turned soil for sowing and seeking;
    fossils and seedlings, worms and foundations
    as you remake earth so the earth shapes you,
    training your gist to more tender beauty.

    Your life crosses mine for this brief moment.
    Although we are barely more than strangers,
    let me tell you: you’re fighting the good fight.
    Seeing your eyes softly battered by time,
    baby wrinkles cupping each, like the feet
    of hummingbirds, unbidden affection
    rises in me like a bread loaf baking.
    What kinship have we? What is this rising?
    Who mixed the dough and who set it to bake?
    Who eats from it, and whom does it nourish?

    Speak here with me and rest, till violet
    ends our tryst with her motionless shadow.
    Breaking the bread of this incarnation,
    we’ll eat, commend ourselves to God, and part.

    No cambric shirt for Karl, seamless and mystical. Just this imagined meeting where the unsayable could be said, and farewelled. She pecked out a clean copy on the old typewriter, read it over, and sealed it in an envelope marked ‘Karl.’ She would drop it in a red post box, and never think of him again.

    And so it might have been, if it hadn’t been for a crisis in the bridal shop.
    â€˜Your heart’s just not in this,’ accused Emily, as Mallory stood in the feathery, corseted gown, sweat filming the nape of her neck, staring at her hollow-eyed reflection. ‘You should be excited. Happy.’
    â€˜I feel lumpy, that’s all.’
    â€˜Why are you even marrying him?’
    â€˜Because he’s nice.’ She thought of Rick’s brown curls, his laughing green eyes, his stubby fingernails. ‘Because he’s the father of my daughter. Because when he asked me, I thought, I might as well marry him as marry anybody.’
    â€˜They are not good reasons, if you ask me,’ said the shop assistant, though nobody had.
    â€˜Has something changed?’ asked Emily.
    Mallory hesitated. Should she tell her? The poem in its envelope lay in her handbag, a white corner sticking out; in fact, if the bag fell open another inch or two, the bold capital letters spelling KARL would give the game away.
    â€˜I just—began to imagine what it might be to be in love .’
    â€˜That’s not a good reason either,’ said the assistant, tweaking a feather on Mallory’s gown. ‘Love is what’s left when being in love is burned away. I read that somewhere.’
    â€˜Very nice,’ sighed Emily, with a barely disguised eye-roll.
    Mallory retreated to the dressing room to divest herself of the boned dress. As it came away, she felt herself peeled free. She could never wear a dress like that. When she emerged, she was almost weeping.
    â€˜I can’t do it, can I?’
    â€˜No. You have to tell him.’
    â€˜Not tonight. Not on Valentine’s Day.’
    â€˜What rot,’ scoffed Emily. ‘It’s just a commercialized load of nonsense.’
    â€˜Still, I don’t want him to associate our breakup with this date forever.’
    â€˜So—cancel tonight. Tell him