CNF: Body of Water
by Kylie Hough
My head–I wished it would stop. I got out my Mac, plugged in my earphones and played a thunderstorm. An octuple scull passed by the living room window making ripples so faint as to be barely audible. Then the city ferry, its passengers staring mute from the top deck. I stood up because they’re less likely to stare if I move between rooms.
It was late afternoon when I chose a position at the end of the rug. Indian or Turkish, it made no difference. It was as soft as lanugo on my soles.
I wondered about the feeling of the ellipsis, and the unfolding of thoughts as they struggled under the weight of sentences. I stood there–under the ceiling, glass separating me and the river, and I listened.
*
In the back-yard I can stand ahead of the light streaming from the door and look out to the jetty toward the mountains. The garden is planted with magnolias and birds of paradise which compete with nutgrass for snippets of sky. None of the pots on my windowsill are empty–orchids flourish, despite cramped conditions, with or without rain.
My dog takes naps on a cushion. His hearing is going and he walks too far in the wrong direction when I call his name. Every day I ask him to accompany me to work, but instead of standing, he sighs, lifts then lowers his head.
The smell I make is not lamb lung.
When I was new to motherhood I used to picture sneaking out of my bedroom. I fancied myself lifting my skirt, climbing over the balcony railing and jumping into the shrubbery before tiptoeing to a waiting Jeep driven by imaginary friends. At the botanical gardens said friends and I would wander down plant strewn paths thick with green so lavish we could barely make out each other’s shadows. We would lose each other and wander disoriented around a dry fountain, pondering nothing but our collective breath for hours.
Thunder storms point the way to that dream.
*
I look at my wrinkles in the scorched bathroom light. The strain will appear as a broken line in a once pure patch of skin on my forehead. It will take a week to emerge an inch above my eyebrows.
I pull a towel from the cupboard and run a bath.
Most of the time I’m not aware I hear it. Anxiety is a thing you feel. Even alone, it becomes-with. Sometimes you hear it after lunch in the space you forget to eject your medicine from crumpled foil. But I know where to go if you want to hear nought.
What you do is lower yourself into a body of water. A tub is sufficient but any watery form will do. River, ocean, stream – it doesn’t matter. Lie back and wait for the surface ripples to make themselves invisible. Take a deep breath, submerge yourself, and listen for the end of games you forbid yourself to play.
Kylie Hough studies Arts at UNE. A VC Scholar, in 2015 Kylie received the Lucy Elizabeth Craigie Award, the Richard B Smith Memorial Prize, and the Australian Federation of Graduate Women Inc. (AFGW) NSW (Armidale) UNE ARTS AWARD. She was a finalist in the Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction 2018 and is published with Feminartsy, the write launch, Verity LA, Other Terrain, and Posit. She has poetry forthcoming with Antithesis and is a grateful recipient of a 2021 Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Award Mentorship in Fiction.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Body of Water”? In 2020 I took a unit called Literature and the Environment as part of my undergraduate Arts degree in English at UNE. I was reading the likes of Dr Astrida Neimanis, Val Plumwood, Audre Lorde, Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva and Ellen van Neerven for university assignments and in my spare time blending poetry and short fiction by a mix of Australian and American authors. Body of Water was inspired by everyone whose work I read at this time, but pays direct homage to Amy Hempel and Astrida Neimanis, whose works, The Collected Stories (Hempel) and Bodies of Water (Neimanis) provided the impetus I found to put fingers to keypad and begin typing a way through the anxiety that is my constant companion. I love a short, punchy read and know now that I’ve started, I’ll continue to enjoy experimenting in the flash genre.
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