wilson's prom national park

She wakes up early.  Still dark out.  No birds singing or cooing.  She wakes early.  No matter that she went to bed at 12.  No matter that she tossed and turned all the night before, sleeping less than not.  Too hot inside, couch cushions soft.  Growing more and more restless.  Missing hard ground.  Crash of waves.  Bugs between the fly and tent screen.  She wakes up.  In a west melb. suburb.  Bed to herself.  Pulled in around a stuffed sheep and a blue kitty.  No want to communicate with anyone.  No want to be brave for anyone. Period soon.  These feelings of contraction.  She knows.  She knows.  She knows.
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.

"How was your trip?"
Ask three times.  Then maybe she'll say something.
How was your trip?"
Three times.
Words.  Wombats.  Backcountry camps.  Obstinate.  Sleeping mat.
Glances up and down the beach.  Empty.  Skirt dropped down past pale thighs, tan knees and calves.
Up and down the beach.  Glance.  Empty.  Doesn't care anyway.  Black tank top damp with sweat.  Hers. Her body's effort.  Up hills.  Down slopes.  Forward movement.  Forward staccato.  Over a belly.  A chest. Shoulders, neck and head.
Then the running.  The water against her feet.  The cove waves rushing to meet hot skin, sticky.  Sometimes she'd dive straight in.  Usually not.  Thigh high.  Eee.  Aaah.  Wait.  Jump up so the waves don't hit her belly. Like she was a child again on a San Diego beach with waves bigger than these.
And finally.  Always.  No  matter how much humming, waiting, tip toeing back.  No matter how cold the water felt as it splashed its way up.
Under.
In.
Always a head going under.  Always.
Sit on a beach.  Fine white sand grains clinging to all body parts exposed.  Horse flies.  Always a horse fly. Swatting, shooshing, yelling.  More killed.  Little lives.  Regret, remorse, but then another would fly in. Biting.

Moon nearly full.  Prayers said to an ocean.  Tears that comes.  Tears that came.  The hands on her knees. Head shaking, screaming.
Ancestors, support.  Always.
Forgotten.  Prayed for.  Reminded.
"Don't have to do it all on your own."
"Don't have to do it all on your own."
Not alone.
Not alone.
Never alone.
Sunset purple.  Pink.  Blue.
A backpack with yellow sleeping mat attached.
She knows how to be alone.
She knows how to be alone.
Knows the song of sweet solitude.
Sleep with the fly flipped open.  Shoes on for pee runs in the dark.
Bull ants.  Ants.  Ants.  Always ants.
She knows.   Woman of words, yes.  All curves and straight lines combined inside her.
What happens to a body that swallows more words than it speaks?  That feels more than it tells to any other human ears?  That learns through movement and sensation and a cheek pressed to peeling bark?
It grows roots.  It keeps on the move.  It stockpiles L's and O's, Y's and T's.  Caverns of letters waiting. Pen to paper.  Paper to pen.
She writes.  She writes.  She writes.  And she doesn't try to explain anything.  The worlds she lives in.  Make believe?  Fantasy?  Spirit?  Real?  "What's the difference and what is real?" she asks.  Again and again.  To her heartmonster again.
"WHAT IS REAL?"
"Your body," he says.
"The ocean," he says.
"The moon," he says.
"Flowing," he says.
"Everything and nothing," he says.  "Exactly in that order."