Tries to sleep again. No. No sleep.
Some ease between the up and down? Flight gone missing and land mines still claiming limbs. Ozone. Whole. What is it? No more than a half glance and a hi from most bushwalkers passing by. "AWKWARD," her insides screamed. A coworker at the bakery once said he never felt awkward. That that word was overused. What is awkward? Its a twisting of the insides, a shrinking away while trying to reach. Reach. Reach. "I want to connect with you!" New friends. Friends of friends. Randoms walking by. No words said. Eyes diverted. "Keep to myself." She knows how to keep her own company. Knows how to be her own best friend. Ride the waves of exhilaration, loneliness, peace and overwhelm.
She knows. She knows. She knows more than she speaks. In a world that demands of her: speak! explain! reason! show.exactly.what.you.mean!
"Can't," she says. Won't."
Squatting low in the grass. Dusk colors of grey sky, dark greens and browns and one wombat with his short legs, stumpy and nibbling in the grass. Stillness everywhere between them.
Can't tell you. Can't speak or even move the way yellow-tailed black cockatoo screeches swell up the cells in her body. Can't say. Can't explain. In a world full of do do do. And she pauses to watch a long fuzzy caterpillar crossing crumbling rock and golden soil. And she stands with her shoulders finally dropped. In some sort of conversation with a gang gang cockatoo. Flown into the loneliness room so her heartmonster could find his way out of there.
