magnetic island
we were so young and naive the year we almost died. we grew our hair long and we both regretted not disappearing that summer. that magnificent summer where the world was perfect and we knew nothing but love.
you would drive me in your father’s car (which was as beaten up as your mother but made music come alive) along picnic bay. the sun was so angry it made the roads look wet in the distance. the trees shied from it, bowing down towards the earth. we were on our way to your parents holiday house on the hill. it was a nice place where we’d often take hits in the pool and drown without sinking below the water. it was small but the windows were big and the light flooded the place. the bed was in the living room below a netted canopy to keep the bugs away. the first time you showed it to me all i wanted to do was fuck you in there, below the canopy. and i did. it was spectacular.
in the beginning moments were all the different colours of the universe, stars were coming together in sticky clusters of dripping light and we were on top of it all. tracing each other’s lips and eyelids and being naked together. poking at the strings under our skin, pouring in liquid gold and feeling the bliss fill us. it was like we were made of the dust that hangs in the air lit by sun. glittering and everywhere at once.
we’d kiss for stretches of time, with our fingers and our bodies. we’d gotten high off drugs before but getting high off love was something else. i saw the way you watched me, with your eyes big like they could swallow me up, like you never wanted to stop watching me. you told me you wanted to get married and have children and love me through the days my skin wrinkles and my hair falls out. i held my belly and imagined a little us and it made me happy. really happy like i’d never felt. this warm contentness like being a child and falling asleep with a belly full of hot chocolate in the winter. we hit up and talked about it all, made it real in our heads and wanted to live forever.
one night we decided to have a party. we invited all our friends from the city and they came to us in the ferry. lots of pretty girls and pretty boys. all of us sleepless teenagers. we sat along the beach and lit a bonfire. it was alive. i danced. i let my fingers and arms make shapes in shadow on the shore. the night was warm so i took off my shirt and danced in my bra- you hated it but i didn’t have the faintest idea. the boys smiled and sang and i was swimming through the air. look at me i said to you, i am beautiful like you are and like everything. but you didn’t catch my eye and so i lay down by you, curled around you on the sand. do you love me? i said. and you nodded toward the sea. i didn’t say sea, i said me, i said but you didn’t find it funny. i felt too good to care so i pulled my fingers over the sand and felt every grain. you walked away into the water, away from me.