Archive
Six Months
by Mark Roberts
December 1981
marguerite lives in a room with a juliette balcony. the door to the balcony is nailed shut.
marguerite announces she is moving out, she is travelling to london to write and model.
marguerite starts spending more and more time with david and kate.
then i notice marguerite spending more and more time with david while kate is at work.
it all comes to a head at marguerite’s going away party. there are tears, bottles are thrown. the house is trashed and marguerite disappears to london without saying goodbye.
there is a crisis in poland and a huge snowstorm sweeps over eastern europe.
Xmas 1981
xmas night feeling sick. i lie down in your old room and remember your cat getting stuck trying to squeeze through a window that was only open a few inches.
later, alone and back at horden street i am suddenly awake. it is the middle of the night.
helen has come back late and she and john are fucking loudly downstairs. their room is directly below mine and it seems as though the sound is echoing around newtown.
Jan 1982
listening to an old cassette of joni mitchell on a battery powered player in the back hills of upper thora. the batteries are dying and joni is speeding up and slowing down.
it is almost 10 a.m. and the mist is starting to lift.
at night I can hear cattle bellowing in the night.
April 1982
life in leichhardt – reading, writing and getting drunk. we are on the flight path and every few minutes a jet roars over the house on its final approach.
May 1982
a surprise birthday party for me and i buy a new fountain pen. i write poems on white paper with faint blue lines and then type it up on a desk overlooking the city lights.
Mary has bought me a present – for the first time since I’ve known her.
Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic. He is currently editor of Rochford Street Review and P76 magazine. He was widely published in Australian literary magazines and journals during the 1980s and 90s and has recently emerged from a long hibernation. His book Stepping Out of Line was published in 1985.
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