FARRAGO

I scoop the complaining cat into my arms and cradle it like a baby. Oliver stands outside the kitchen door, throwing the mince meat balls out onto the lawn. One magpie appears, then two, three, swooping in on the easy breakfast. More magpies swoop from the sky until the lawn is dotted with them. Oliver throws the last ball and comes inside.

The way it starts is the way it ends and I kiss you like the worst I’ve ever had is a paper cut. I dream of asking you out for coffee, watch the flowers grow in real time. You live above me so I stick stars on the ceiling. I’m hoping that they’ll help you sleep better.

I called her every Saturday morning, though, and played ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush into the phone. I wouldn’t say anything, just play the song as soon as she answered and then hang up when it finished. I never did explain why and I think she hated it, but it became such a habit that she just answered every week without fail.

You can remember when he used to sit there amongst the eucalyptus trees and the brown dirt. Coffee in that old white mug, words of some society or organisation faded from the ceramics and from your memory too. The air of your backyard entering his lungs becoming his heartbeat, slow and steady and sure.

He thought of his wicked tutor Dan, those evil ticket inspectors, those bothersome essays. Such a cold and uncaring world. But then he paused. He stopped and he thought. How he wished he could leave, pursued by no care. But he did care. He now cared for this world. He thought of Chloe, his friendship, the laughter and joy. He thought of Professor David and the comedy show he performed. Such warmth and love this world did possess. ‘Twas a mingled yarn, with good and ill together.

At night, the streets—unlike any other city—are empty, but the repurposed Victorian gas-lights remain lit. They project onto the neo-classical architecture, the statues of Oxford circus, the garrets made of red brick, exaggerated angles/boundaries of shadow like the cabinet of Dr Caligari, or the fingers in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, edging around the columns and overly decorated facades like vines.

Is beauty the same as love? You used to know this answer, but now you’re not sure. You used to know ugliness meant fragmentation, splintering, isolation; you thought beauty was their absence. You’re finding it harder and harder to find that difference. When you knew beauty, poetry came easily to you. When you’ve forgotten it, when you think poetry has an obligation to be more beautiful than silence, you can’t write at all.

Everything appears serene until IRON MAN flies through the sky with a loud whoosh! He is distributing fluttering bits of paper from above. The camera pans down to street level, and one of the papers flutters into view. It reads: Wedding of the Century: Bucky Barnes and Captain America in classy italic font.

“Okay, it’s fine. It’s Macca’s, they won’t question my order…uh, hi. Can I get three-hundred and sixty nuggets?”

You haven’t slept in two days because you can’t be bothered going to bed. Walking home at 8am you see things you haven’t seen in a long time: people out for breakfast, old Greek women shuffling to church, parents walking their kids to school, a man in a kebab shop slowly readying a fresh tube of meat. It’s all happening.