Sailing towards the shipwreck
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First published in the literary anthology:
What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years? – An Anthology of the Bush Years, 2000 to 2008
Contains essays, fiction, correspondence, art, photography, humor, and poetry.
Edited by David Barringer
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Holding his breath now in the damp single room of a side-street hotel only a hundred yards or so from the mortar fire, he locked himself in concentration. His mind on single track, focussed, sidelining the blasts outside as he sat poised, holding the bartered scalpel blade over the steam of a kettle boiling over. Ready now. Trembling slightly. His nerves, his fingers like fuses ready to trip, poised to any sudden movement, ready to pull back from any sudden sound. In a dim lit room without heating, in one of the few buildings left standing he folded himself up under the bare 40watt lamp, leaning over the small token table and with the small sterile blade he carefully cut her out of the last photograph. With a little glue and a sterile pair of tweezers he teased her sun-drenched image in amongst the others. Delicately positioning her into the final space right on the edge of the frame as a blast rocked the sidewall, another claiming the street below. Lamps shaking, cries heard, plaster cracking and dust everywhere. Each flake spinning in the half-light like tinsel, falling over the work he wiped preciously clean with his sleeve. The bare white groove on his wedding finger now collecting dust.