I was about 13 at the time I think. My older sister bundled my younger sister and I up into the car I would later buy from her and drove us to the pub down the road where we planned to collect her then-boyfriend, now-husband.

She pulled up at the front of the entrance door where a few men stood smoking and talking together. One of the men approached the car, seeing a group of young girls smiling and jovial and he mouthed some words to us we couldn’t decipher from behind the closed windows.

I smiled at him, warily, and looked back at my sister who was busying herself with a text message to let her boyfriend know she’d arrived. When she noticed the man approach the car, reaching his hand to open the car door where I sat, she hastily locked the doors with the central locking button between us. Her eyes were wide and her word spat out angrily: “No” to the man who backed away with his hands in the air, the smile still on his face. It was so funny to him that he was seen as a threat. But she knew. She knew what anger and damage a man could do to her or me. She knew then and I am sad that I didn’t know about her hurt already.

Her daughter, now, years after this memory, might not realise the same thing when she cries out “Daddy! Leave mummy alone!”. She doesn’t know what ripped pyjamas mean or what bruises represent underneath the skin. It takes a few more years, clearly.

We’re just having a little conversation to fill the space between us. It is small talk to begin with – meant to open a dialogue about bigger things after greeting.

You describe to me the apartment you live in, leaving out no detail. I walk with your words as you speak them. A hand brushes against each wooden surface, near the door, the paneling of the frame, over the books that don’t gather dust despite their quantity. You must read them often. I don’t linger on their titles because you don’t.

You mention the doorway into the living room, open plan, a window casting light onto the almost empty coffee table in the middle. One magazine sits there: Dumbo Feather. A sculpture, too. The sun light in the roof beats down onto the sculpture and lights it perfectly as if you had curated an exhibition of minimalist art.

I take my shoes off at the door – I assume this is a bare foot household. I don’t know why I assume that. I flex my toes on your wooden floor, put the weight of my body onto the soles. No carpets yet warm to the touch. It is cosy in this place; perfectly sized for one person to feel safe. I imagine myself sharing it with you. Being invited into your retreat. Sometimes too small. Sometimes frostiness between us because of the walls. Mostly perfect for intimacy. Curled up into each other on the couch that feels like a cloud.

You move to the kitchen and so I follow. It is small, clean. Tidy. I move my eyes to the sink above which you explain a glass vase holds some flowers. I don’t know what type of flower and you do not elaborate. Light green tiles frame a bay window. Gas, not electric. Best for cooking you tell me.

Outside the window you make the best of a bad situation: hanging plants on the tattered brick wall that separates your neighbour’s home from yours. There is no backyard to speak of. The kitchen bench is cool and continues the green theming. No clutter anywhere. I wonder if you have any, anywhere. In your house or in your life. The fridge is bare stainless steel, no magnets, no bills to pay.

The bathroom next – small again, but perfectly practical, like an IKEA wet dream. Everything stored, upright, packed away. Despite that, your home doesn’t seem unlived in. It seems inviting. Packaged and waiting. It seems right. 

Your bedroom, upstairs, is a loft. The ceiling is low and sloped towards the window at the head of your bed. The stair case that leads there is wooden and springy. It creaks on the third step. I imagine a romantic path up those stairs. Falling over each other and laughing into our shoulders. Stopping to kiss when gravity shows which step is most comfortable.

The warmest part of the house is the loft bedroom, you say. The morning sun comes through that circle window above two pillows and a quilt. I can’t help but imagine your naked body sprawled across that bed with the sun on your back. You are olive skinned and your hair is shinier than I ever thought possible in that sunlight. It sounds like some sort of adult version of Play School but I don’t mention that. I ask if it gets too warm in summer and whether that’s unbearable: do you sleep downstairs?

You tell me that that’s when you stay at your girlfriend’s house. She has an air conditioner. You joke that your house is lived in for three seasons of the year and hers the fourth. She’s got a big place with four housemates. Her house is full of instruments and photos and artworks and laughter and noise and they wear shoes inside. They have two cats.

I’m confused by the stark contrast of two opposing aesthetics. I ask how you manage to move from ordered, loft living to a shared household like the one described. You tell me it’s not about the house or the aesthetics. You tell me it’s about who’s in the space; the company. I concede. No-one would seriously fall in love with a house.

I went for a solo-cycle the other day, by the river, in the sun. I really enjoy being alone, in the moment with nothing to answer to but my own thoughts. The sun was glorious and the wind was fresh against my skin.

I smiled, a contented smile and revelled in how I was doing exactly what I wanted at the exact moment I wanted it. The frustrations of the week; memories of the anxiety of forced interaction with others were passing me as I cycled on, gradually picking up pace but never feeling stressed.

I was interrupted by splashing in the river and turned my face towards it, thinking perhaps some idiot were swimming. Although it was beautiful, I could not imagine swimming in that river. Where I looked, there were ripples in the glassy surface and then a fin! I stopped my bike and stared in wonder at the Dolphin breaching the water every few seconds.

I squealed with delight “HA!” and looked around me hurriedly for someone to share the moment with. I wanted to say “A dolphin! Look! A dolphin right there! Look how amazing it is!”, but there was noone around me. I was disappointed then, that I was alone.

It passed me quickly and reappeared metres further away until it was unable to be seen by my failing eyesight. I looked after it for a long time, hoping that someone would notice it down the path in front of me and react in the same way. I hoped that I would see the same reaction in someone else – that I could connect on some level to another person right then.

I had that moment entirely to myself and ironically, I realised I didn’t want it be my own.

There’s something inside me
A part that is broken
Shattered or loose
Brittle, broken, splintered

It’s a grenade; a weapon
Tumbling about between my bones
No master and no purpose
But to obliterate

You can’t see from the outside
There’s no hunch, no blood
But it’s there, I swear
One day it’ll be too much
Not for me; but for you

I need it removed; extracted;
like a diseased bone, or a rotten tooth
A procedure enacted
The act of subtraction
To result in a whole

“What are you doing for your birthday tonight? A party? I didn’t get an invitation” she asks, teasing, sipping her soy mocha and clearly burning her mouth in the process.

“I don’t do parties”. I say. I’m stiff lipped and blank eyed and there’s an awkward silence. I place a piece of bacon on my toast and lift it to my mouth. There’ll be no elaboration on that subject and she takes the hint. We talk about our studies instead. She forgets about the temperature of her HOT HOT HOT drink and burns her mouth a total of four more times. Ladies and Gentleman: Stephanie, the PhD. candidate.

She’s a new friend, who I’ve met at University, so I forgive that she doesn’t know I’ve not hosted a party since I was 14. She’s also blonde, so I forgive that she doesn’t know that hot hurts.

Maybe at some point I’ll tell her about the last party. We’ve become quite close over the last two years but there’s still a bit of shame attached to the birthday story and I’m not sure I trust her not to judge me yet.

I think most of the time you can pinpoint the origin of an insecurity down to one event. In this instance, my brother was turning 11 and I was just mortified by the idea of spending an afternoon with his smelly, annoying friends. I thought I was a good sister though, so I only complained a little. Just a little.

My brother had luckily invited my friend Melissa, who we both knew from after school care. I knew Melissa wasn’t likely to come though. There were other parties on that same day and my brother wasn’t exactly Danny from Grease. I knew his party would be second choice, maybe third or fourth. Maybe not on the choice list at all.

It turned out that Melissa wasn’t going to come. Over a series of weeks, I begged her. I bribed her. She finally agreed and a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t think about my brother at all – I just wanted to make sure there was someone there for me to hang out with.

Melissa arrived at the official start time and we played “Pin the tail on the donkey” and “What’s the time Mister Wolf” with my parents and brother. No-one else came. She left at the advertised finish time and we tipped all but a few of the perfect lolly bags into the bin. We pulled the streamers down and it didn’t take long for the house to look like a party hadn’t even occurred there.

Every year my brother’s birthday passes with the obligatory Facebook messages and phone calls just as mine does. There are no streamers and no lolly bags. I’ve never told him that I begged Melissa to come. I never will. That’s what I’m most ashamed of – thinking only of myself and not taking the time to consider how he might feel if no-one came. I hate the thought that he might discover that Melissa only came because she was begged to. Would be be mad at me or just crushed?

“Do you want to hang out on your birthday at least? You can’t just let it pass without celebrating.” Stephanie interrupts the memory. Her coffee is cold now.

I think for a while. It has been 16 years. Maybe that’s long enough. Maybe I don’t have to punish myself anymore.

“Yeah. OK.” I say. “Let’s do dinner. Do you think anyone will be able to come at such late notice?”

I am dust.

Dust that touches you, late in the lonely night, covers you, rests on your shoulders, tangled in your hair.

Dust that you breathe in, deep and long, without realising it is there.

Dust that sits on your lashes like powder and lines down your throat.

One day you will shake me, I’ll wither and float away and wear thin on your skin. Or perhaps her breath on your hair will disturb me and I’ll be gone.

If only I knew how to hold on.

.

He’s respectful and kind

and when I’m grumpy, he doesn’t seem to mind.

He’s funny and smart

and he has listening, down to an art.

He holds me when I cry –

it seems he doesn’t have to try

to be the most caring man

and my biggest fan.

There’s only one thing missing

He’s not who I want to be kissing

If not him, then who?

He’s just not you.

I present a facade of self assurance when really I am insecure and guilt ridden every minute I am awake. I walk past homeless people in the city – sullen eyes and sunken cheeks – and I feel ashamed of my plump body and the money I spend on losing weight. I want to hide the bulges and the evidence of my daily dabbles in excess.

It’s impossible. I reek of privilege and I know it. When I wallow in my self pity, smearing tears from my cheeks, I feel guilt for even being unhappy when outwardly things look great for me. I watch the news and see the images and hear the stories of refugees fleeing imaginable horror, acknowledge the atrocities numerous wars have seen, contemplate the injustices that have been done to our Indigenous peoples and empathise with children and women and men who have been and continue to be assaulted or abused. All of this from my comfortable, warm bed.

Knowing all of this exists and that every morning I take a little pill and I talk for an hour each fortnight, to a Professional, about my problems seems so…wrong.

Is it really necessary – and is it moral – to block from your mind all the bad things in the world in order to be happy?

I was a teenager when I was first diagnosed with depression. I can remember that I told my Dad that it seemed like lots and lots of bad things were happening more and more in the world and that made me feel people were not to be trusted and the world was a horrible place. Dad told me that bad things had always happened but perhaps I was more aware of it now that I’d gotten older. That was probably true in a lot of ways.

Today, I feel that same despair at the world.

I’m a cinephile and I often think of particular films or scenes when ordering my feelings and thoughts. I can relate this feeling strongly to a scene in one of my favourite movies: The Fifth Element. Leeloo is a supreme being who has been tasked with saving the universe from complete destruction. In one of the last scenes of the movie, she is exhausted, crying and draped across the arms of Korben Dallas, her accidental conspirator and supporter. Korben is trying to convince Leeloo that humans are worth saving.

Leeloo has learnt about the universe and it’s inhabitants through news and history. Watching her flick through the images when learning, painted a horrible story of our past and current life that made me feel sick. I saw that reel of information play through my own head when I read Facebook in the mornings or listen to the news throughout the day.

Leeloo is unconvinced that there is good in the world. Korben seems to have only one answer: we have love. I know that it went through her head as it goes through mine: what shows you this love? Have you seen what goes on in this world? These events do not show love.

I often feel that this struggle goes on inside me and I’m not entirely sure what arguments my internal Korben makes. I don’t think I know how many times Leeloo is going to be able to save me.

I find it incredibly fascinating that penguins are generally monogamous and many mate for life. One might argue that for penguins, there are soulmates. I’ve wondered lately, as I lay about sleepily; do penguins dream? More specifically, do they dream of their special, loved one? Their soulmate? Maybe penguins don’t have to dream because life is snowflakes and fluffy babies with their partners when they open their eyes. I’m not suggesting that life is easy for them. Just that things would be immeasurably more bearable if there’s such a thing as a soulmate, and you’ve got one, right?

I don’t believe in soulmates personally, at least for humans. It’s romantic nonsense for us. It’s irrational. Maybe it works for penguins because – I assume – they aren’t the complicated, hot mess that humans are. All feelings and fucking.

It must be a relief – or a curse, I’m unsure – for those who don’t dream. Dreams are bittersweet in many ways. Sometimes upon waking, I long for the dream world to be my real world. To not know what the dream world holds might be how penguins get by with their realities.

Currently, I live in two worlds.

One World is where he stands the first night I met him, hoody on, strumming the guitar strings as if plucking at my heart. One where he and I get lost in that kiss in the car, where I notice the ache in my back as I lean over the gearbox to fall deeper.  It’s the world in which our hands find each other, seemingly of their own accord, as we walk down the road to the house we share. It’s the world where I compromise a little more and he nurtures a little more, the world where we come back together, despite all that’s happened. This world is without definition, no edges, hazy, and I try to hold onto it every single night.

The Second World begins where the other finishes. This world is alarm clocks and schedules, friendships and casual sex. It’s rational. It’s where I tell myself it ended, several times, for a reason. In this world, I remember the fights, the tears and the pain that we caused each other because we just weren’t on the same page. It’s where I date this other man, happily, but know there’s a void that just cannot be filled by anyone new. This is the world in which penguins are just penguins. They aren’t an anthropomorphic cliché that I seek to find in a partner of my own.

I don’t want to be in between worlds any longer. I want a new world. One where we both acknowledge that we’ve changed since the last time we tried together. I want a new world where perhaps the changes we’ve made and the ways we’ve grown have resulted in each of us becoming who we need for it to work. I want to silence those thoughts that tell me not to call him and I want the other side of the bed to be his again. I want that hoody and I want the back ache inducing kiss.

Penguins come to mind when I wake because that’s the world in which I want to live. A sleepy collision of worlds One and Two – rationality and reckless hopefulness. I want my world to have him in it again. I want to wake up from one dream to another. I want to have his stubble on my cheek and to feel his breath on my skin when he says: “Good morning Penguin”. I want him to read this and to take the step that I’m unable to make.

I’m leaving this here, now. For another Penguin to pick up.

He’s messed up. It’s easy to categorize him as crazy. His story is so exceptional, it’s hard to believe it’s really true. He flat out defined himself as a sociopath in early conversations with our lady. 

Wikipedia informed her that sociopathy was otherwise known as “Antisocial personality disorder”. Characterised by “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others”, she read. He laughed and teased when she didn’t respond immediately – he knew she was googling. 

He was intense and broken; so broken. “Beyond repair” as he kept reminding her. 

She is kind and loving. She thinks everyone is worthy of love. She wanted to prove it to him everytime he talked about how he was unlovable. She knows that is a terrible reason to get involved with someone. 

He was the quiet boy at primary school. She was the girl that really saw who he was inside and did not judge, like the others. There was something between them then. Unrequited. Now, 14 years later, they’d come back into each other’s lives, fully formed adults with back stories at completely different ends of the life experience spectrum. 

For all intents and purposes she had lived a very comfortable, normal life with all the expected trials and rites of passages that any young, white woman may encounter growing up. She had loved deeply and lost spectacularly, grown as a person and learned how to be a friend. She had worked on becoming more independent,  and mostly won that game. She’d lived alone and with housemates, dated, had her heart broken again and broke some too, completed a university degree, traveled a little, had crises of confidence, loved and hated her body, flirted shamelessly, gotten fit, developed her career and spent much too much on social pursuits. She worked hard, constantly to be a better person.

He had earned his money dealing drugs. He’d been involved with extensive violence and crime, spent countless hours and dollars on therapy to deal with being physically abused and neglected as a child. He’d worked hard to build muscle and get fit – he structured his life around workouts, protein shakes and bulking meals. He then discovered he was going to die of cancer, imminently, at age 23, and after some time, came to grips with his impending death. He fell in love, walked away from love, spent time in and out of hospital, did physical therapy and had surgery after surgery after surgery and got fit once more, despite new disabilities. He now faced a life ahead of him filled with intimidating possibility after learning that he was in remission. 

They talked online for some time before they met again in person. She was a little frightened of him. They began as friends but she knew that she would jump into bed with him soon and she wanted to delay that. She always jumped in too soon. 

There was an intense physical, spiritual connection between them when they did sleep together. It was probably the hottest, most passionate sexual experience she had ever had in her life. She thought that maybe this meant he was different to all the others – that maybe she was truly connected to and interested in this one. 

It was the first time he had ever felt a real connection to another person and the first time he’d felt someone truly understood and loved him. He didn’t feel uncomfortable then, to share with her that he was falling in love with her after only two nights and three days together. 

She believed him but knew that she wasn’t there at that point with him and probably never would be. She immediately realized how selfish and inconsiderate she had been. She tried to justify her actions with “it’s what I wanted at the time” but deep down felt that was a cop-out used by asshole hedonists. 

To her, slowly removing herself from his life was the right thing to do. She honestly thought she was doing the best for both of them by cutting things off where they stood before he became more attached when she knew she wouldn’t reciprocate. In hindsight, she regretted her actions as they were cowardly.

He called her out on her subsequent withdrawal from conversations and her reluctance to be honest about how she felt about him. He likened her actions to that of an embarrassed child who would hide a broken vase so as to not have to deal with the consequences of that broken object. 

She realised that while she might be OK jumping into relationships head first and with reckless abandon, it wasn’t just her emotions she was gambling with when she did so. 

She thinks now that perhaps it is she who exhibits the most sociopathic behaviour after all.