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LOVE ADDICTIONS
1. Coral Speaks Into A Telephone Receiver
barbie sat in the gutter, both knees bent with a bit of wire jutting out, we were down by the vandalised phone box, her mascara had been smeared with turpentine, 'life's a bitch,' she said, we waited for the five o'clock lights to come on, the signal for all the kids to head for home, why was there was no phone in our house?, i would always tug on mum's skirts when she rang up nanny, around at the phone box in passefield avenue, it was always smashed in, once the receiver was left hanging, another time it was ripped out, i took a barbie doll around on my eighth birthday & thought of hanging her by the neck, but instead i clipped her hands to the cord, her long long legs hung down, i made a noise through my teeth like the wind blowing outside the box, soon the wind was howling into my throat through my new front teeth, as quick curl barbie struggled to survive, when i finally got home my aunty had been given her share of the birthday cake, she was already gone, mum's look told me, 'there you have spoiled another birthday', all my presents lined up along my pink & purple bedspread, but what did it mean? i needed; a phone to ring out along that blue wall, the outside world to come pouring down into my hands with ringing like bells, the phone to clear the blue dusk of the rooms where i couldn't breathe, nan had the big black solid chunky phone that made my fingers ache to dial it, but it hardly ever rang, sometimes it was the obscene phone caller up the road breathing deeply, she said that he was back out of the mental hospital & that they had been having problems with him for years, when i was an adult, i paid off seven hundred dollar phone bills & became a phone addict |
