content warning: racial violence, racial slurs

As far back as I can remember, my favourite birthday was wrapped in a family road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane. Slow hours of gleeful exhales filled Mum and Dad’s silver Holden Commodore as the sky morphed from Wonga Pigeon-grey to Kingfisher-gold. Green signs of Wangaratta and Jugiong dotted the highway landscapes. Matt and I caught countless geodudes and machops against the blurring scrim of honeyed fields. I will never forget the night we took rest in a caravan park, huddled into a trailer, stuffing spongy, thick-crusted pizzas covered in pineapple into our wide, dribbling mouths. In Brisbane, Uncle Ahkiew fed us with his cackling laughter, pushing pins and needles into our sides. He showed us Movie World, where Matt and I sprinted backwards through queues for ‘Lethal Weapon – The Ride’, pulling funny faces for ride photos on repeat. All day, we searched for chances to hold pre- Instagram poses alongside my superheroes. Everything else was a champagne haze.

Decades later, while strolling towards Flinders Street Station, slurs were thrown at me in aggressive timbres from the safety of a passing car. All I could remember then was the dusk filling with electric heat on my favourite birthday. Walking through the loud of Surfers Paradise. Tall, white figures gathering slowly behind us. Their breath scratching the back of my neck. Murmurs bubbling and crescendoing into high-pitched squawks: cackling, pointing, and dispersing. Waves of bloody Chinks and go back to where you came from rippling in circles and lingering in a heavy fog. The ground shivering. Gravity tightening like a vice against my throat. Huddling together in the middle of the street as the surrounding world emptied. The night losing its warmth and succumbing to ocean freeze. My favourite birthday.

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pink and blue raincoat
trembling
last train to Sandringham