Competition

First Prize

Salt Box Eyes
by Patricia Lee
Robertson, NSW

I
At forty-five my body tells me I can still have children though the tubes have been erased by a surgeon and my husband has left me for a series of Chinese women there is a lot here still to mother my three kids one an almost grown woman who loves guinea pigs and boys with dark hair my middle son wants to be a farmer and won't speak to his father who wants to sell our farm and keep half for himself as if he hasn't already taken enough the youngest one bounces a lot on a trampoline and watches the clouds thud by and the wind blow gum leaves across the lawn against the barbecue sleep twin lambs less than a week old who almost died before they were born I had to pull the first one out because he was stuck and his tongue lolled like a dead thing but there was a faint suck when I put my finger in his mouth his brother was so limp and weak and cold I had already buried him in my mind but inside the garage with his mother and brother and wrapped in a newspaper and hot water bottle he revived and staggered all legs enough to get the ewe to lick him clean and eventually to suck that yellow thick life-giving colostrum his mother was dripping she leaked thick blood in heaps on the concrete and I thought she was sick too until I set them out in a yard with real grass and fresh air and they are a picture now of everything we don't want to lose here and won't if I can help it.

II
Life as a film could be interesting if the actors knew their lines and the director wasn't shit but the cinematographer gets in some good scenes like at dusk when the sky is fire behind trees or at dawn in the mist and everything is faded and the sun's rays shaft through trees on the side of the road and there are bleached shadows under the pale moving cattle as they move up the sandy hill ah yes and the script is another thing we say what people want to hear and have a shock when the echo of our own words startle us yet sometimes when the cinematographer gets it right and the sound of your own voice is slowed down by carefree days on the back lawn on a chair with a cup of tea and no book and you look into the forest and see the tall straight shafts of trees and the red scuff marks where possums have climbed then your words are full of wisdom and the philosophy of contemplation and The Movie Show would give you five out of five.

III
I lie in my bed at night and my feelings fill the whole room what I've done that day what the kids have tried to do and haven't succeeded at what I want for all our futures and who I think of as a friend who has been a support in times of need that rush over you like a flood and throw you against rocks and up against debris but what you know about me is about as much as would fit into a box of salt I cannot know what you feel as deeply as I do and what feelings you effuse into your own bedroom sized box when the lights are out and there are no distractions and the harsh and deep things people have said sit on your chest like a heavy log getting to know someone is like equalizing the boxes of each others' feelings so that both of us can accommodate them and so that the box is neither too heavy or too light for each of us to bear I think that is what love is to know what feelings fill the night for the other person and to share the sensations and lift the logs from each other's hearts.