Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet,
performer, arts producer, cyclist, writer, gal
about town, feminist, freewheeler, and
friend. One day, she is going to be an
ideas curator. Which basically
means, she will tell you
exactly what she thinks.
Until then, you’ll have
to read between
the lines.
Undone in country blue
I was undone in country blue waiting for you, waiting for you by the side of the road, gazing up at the trees and the sky. I knew I had a lot more in me to say, a lot more to give to you, if you only had wanted it. Like the riverbed waiting for the rain, even in my cracked and empty hours I remembered the rain, the flooding, gushing, endless, boundless water that might bring life and love, washing away all the dusty dry, softening the days that ached and hummed with insect song and bird cry and the wailing of the empty sky.
I had more there for you. I would have sung the summer long for you. I would have sat my porch with whiskey warming in my glass, listening to the sound of nothing but our loving going on.
But in the end, it was going nowhere. We were going nowhere. So I stood waiting for you by the side of the road a little while longer before finally I stuck out my thumb. There was no one on the road for a while, then no one stopping for girls like me. And in those hours I thought it all through, the fuck ups, the disasters, the petty betrayals, the skint days, the moments of replete, the awkward silences, the fulsome screams of, the orphaned sighs, the derelict statements of “I love you” that meant nothing in the end because there was an end at all. And I knew that a great deal of it was my own bleeding fault, in fact, almost all of it had been my choice.
And that realisation made not one whit of difference: we were still where we were, which was no the fuck where.
So, when the beat up grey truck pulled up, and the driver nodded as I stated my hopeful destination, I just hopped on up and got on in.
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You had me at: “I was undone in country blue waiting for you…”
Yeah, you ‘n words got a thing goin’ on.
Write on!
she has done it again… so glad that truck turns up!
Ah, but Vicky, I was sad to have to leave some people behind. But that’s 2012, the year of moving foward, I have to say.
I hope that you are, as always, travelling well! Much love you to, wonderful lady.