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NOTES:

OPEN CATEGORY: SPRING 2008 - HIGHLY COMMENDED

This story text appears exactly as sent in by the writer. No changes or corrections have been made; however, all stories to be included in the published Anthology will be edited for grammar and punctuation before printing.

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"Losing Spring"

by Holly Ringland - Canberra, Australia

HIGHLY COMMENDED: "OPEN" CATEGORY, SPRING 2008

I was in my garden amongst upturned earth, pressing purple buds of lavender between my hands to smell the scent on my fingers, when the phone rang.

His voice crackled down the line, catching in his throat, releasing in my stomach a burst of translucent butterflies.

I pressed the receiver hard against my ear, straining to soak the sound of his voice into my mind, the way I used to do as a girl when I listened for the ocean in a conch shell. I wiped a streak of dark earth across my cheek. I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. My mouth filled with the scarlet tang of blood, the taste of damming my words.

He said my name a lot.

He asked of me.

I nodded silently. My eyes squeezed shut so tightly that silver stars shot across the black curtain of my eyelids. I listened to his voice flowing over me, soothing something jagged inside my chest like water wearing a river stone smooth. Water was all around me, rushing through my ears, falling down my cheeks, filling up my lungs.

I listened to him, remembering. The smell of oil colours and turpentine. The indigo flavour of blueberry pancakes. Dust motes swirling and falling on a shaft of sunlight to disappear on the surface of skin.

I finally spoke, in one great torrent as though I was talking in tongues, reciting the address of my after to the person in my before; marking X on the map of my new world order contained behind a wall of overgrown lavender and a rusty fence with a broken gate.

I hung up the phone. Time seeped thickly past me like molasses running through my fingers. My limbs filled with mercury and I slowly slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.

In the distance outside, a dog howled a low tortured tune.

The summer wind blew through the kitchen windows feeling as though it had blown straight across embers.

She was everywhere. In the soft white cotton dress I was supposed to bring her home in that I had wrapped in gossamer paper and kept in an embossed cardboard box that was slowly rotting in the dark shadows of my closet. In the uncracked spines and crisp pages of books in boxes stacked behind the closed door of the spare room, that were meant to bear her fingerprints, sticky with honey or dirt or melted chocolate, each an individual universe she was supposed to dip her toes in. In her only photograph that was sealed in gladwrap and folded into a bunnykins rug, hidden under a loose floorboard in my bedroom; a grainy glimpse of a tiny bud in winter that would never come into bloom.

I choked on my own spit, realising the low howling in the distance was my own.

An age passed.

I showered.

I washed my hair and combed out the tangles and knots.

I sat naked on the edge of my bed, running my index finger across the mottled angry scar over my womb that stubbornly would not heal. I slipped a finger inside myself, feeling the soft folds of flesh, wondering of the warmth, wondering how the world felt inside, wondering how it felt to leave.

I sunk my nails into my thighs and breathed through the dizziness.

I stood suddenly and lunged for the box nearest to me. I ripped it open and rifled through outfits from a previous life, versions of myself falling around my feet. I thought of an Irish fairytale my grandmother told me, of selkies who shed their seal skins to become human for the love of a man, but who could only love the man for a certain period of time before they put their skins back on and returned to the sea where they belonged.

I glimpsed a patch of lemon in the box and pulled out the yellow dress I was wearing on The Special Day. I went to another smaller box and opened it carefully, lifting my grandmother’s jewellery box from a swatch of bubble wrap. I took out the pair of turquoise earrings he sent me from somewhere in southeast Asia, a location I could not discern from the postage stamp, and re-pierced my ears with the earring hooks. People here say turquoise is for healing, his card had said.

I strummed my fingers against the kitchen table, watching ballerinas of sunlight dance across the wall. I listened to the wind rustle the leaves on the eucalypts lining the driveway.

I smoothed my dress.

I arranged the tea cups on the table again. I picked at the plate of oat and sultana biscuits I had baked only yesterday, thinking as I pulled them out of the oven that I would either have to freeze them or feed them to the birds.

I bit my nails tasting the remnants of earth from the garden, laced with the bitter sweetness of possible growth and new beginnings.

I smoothed my dress.

At first I thought I was imagining the plume of dust spiralling behind the old ute rumbling along the dirt road. My heart threatening to explode from its cradle in my chest, I leapt from my chair and stood at the screen door, palms pressed against the mesh.

The ute turned down my driveway.

Suddenly, he was delivered to me as though a thousand nights of dreams had solidified in front of my eyes.

He stood at the rusty gate, his sky-coloured eyes searching my face obscured by the screen door.

He was barefoot, wearing a worn and faded brown three piece suit, his tie hanging loosely off centre. He carried a suitcase in one hand and the biggest bunch of white lilies I had ever seen in the other. They winked at me in the sunlight, clusters of platinum stars.

“I’ve made tea,” I said, my voice feeling as rusty as the gate when he swung it open on its one functional hinge. He slowly walked the path to my front door.

“The Special Day dress,” he said, standing before me. I could feel the warmth of his breath through the screen door. His hair was longer, curling over the edge of his collar that was gray with grime and sweat.

“I made biscuits too.” My scar ached.

“Tea and biscuits are good,” he said. “Tea and biscuits are good.”

I slowly pushed the screen door open.

He took a step back, and walked forward into my parallel universe.

COMMENTS FROM OUR COMMISSIONING EDITOR, Jo Holloway:
A powerful and very moving glimpse into the ripped lives and deep loss of a couple, and the promise of healing to come. Sensitive, and delicately written; strong pen strokes etched into the heart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Holly Ringland’s fervour for writing started when she wasn’t yet old enough to write, so dictated her stories to her devoted mother while pacing in her scribe’s high heels that swallowed her feet. She grew up by the ocean in a southeast corner of Queensland albeit for a few years when her parents sold the family business and packed up to live in North America for a few years. They rented a house in Vancouver, Canada and drove a converted GMC van motorhome across the west-mid United States from national park to national park. Before she had reached her teens, Holly had walked her bare feet across some of the most beautiful soul-rendering country in the world and her imagination was never the same.

When her school guidance counsellor told her that a career in writing was ‘pointless’ and ‘impossible’ Holly tried various other vocations, such as receptionist, retail assistant and legal secretary, until she decided she was too young to die a withering death of suffocation and marched herself off to university where she studied a double-major Communications degree and spent three years immersed in creative writing. Dodging the cap and gown ceremony, Holly packed her notebook, pen, hiking boots and best friend into her backpack and headed to Canada to live until she either ran out of money or got thrown out of the country.

Not quite so dramatic, Holly returned to Australia to answer homesickness after a few years abroad. Feeling quickly stifled upon her return to her home town, she followed the fickle finger of fate inland... a long way inland to the red sands of Central Australia where she found home amongst clumps of Spinifex grass and clusters of Desert Oak trees around the awe-inspiring rock formations of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). After an uninspiring stint working at Ayers Rock Resort, Holly voraciously pursued work within the dual World Heritage listed jointly-managed Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park where she managed the Park media permit section and spent three years living and working in one of the most complex, beautiful, desolate, breathtaking and difficult places in the world. One day, when the red dust has settled, Holly hopes to write about her experiences and life in the red centre.

To reintegrate herself into the ‘real world’ post-desert dwelling life, Holly followed work to Australia’s capital city, Canberra, where she spends her days overseeing government funding programs that support the promotion and maintenance of Indigenous Australia’s languages, cultures, arts and community sustainability. Pleasantly surprised by Canberra’s underground art scene and the sheer delight of range and choice at the local supermarket after spending years in the desert, Holly has only recently thrown herself wholeheartedly into her writing for the sheer thrill of it, to make it a part of her daily life and self... although now the high heels fit. Losing Spring was the storm that broke a long writing drought in Holly’s life and receiving Highly Commended in the Sunpenny Publishing open writing competition is the first objective independent writing accolade Holly has ever received.

When she grows up, Holly dreams of writing for a living and owning a little wooden house with a floor to ceiling library, a dairy cow named Flossy, cherry trees in the garden and a heavy old wooden desk by the window where she can sit with her laptop, a cup of tea, her potted lilies and a dog called Wilbur at her feet. You can find more of Holly’s unpublished writings at her blog www.hollyringland.com

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