You Both Woke Up to the Sun

Miranda Abbott

Author’s Note: This work is an experimental non-fiction piece, taking ‘I’ sentences from my diaries and changing them to the second person to explore the intersection between writer and reader.

Listen to Miranda Abbott read ‘You Both Woke Up to the Sun’

You both woke up to the sun. You are with him or without. You remember the drawing he showed you. You want to do this. You will be changed when you come back. You learn about time through a goat eating purple flowers. You watched two big circles of light move across his cheek. You want the blue house shining among the blunt, naked sentences. You were in the centre, completely surrounded. You bob your head up to find you are a prism made of others. You’re not sure if grief is all on the same scale. You sat and thought about it. You didn’t know. You are not really in this chair at all. You are as old as the ocean. You were wearing your big brown coat and tortoise-shell glasses. You need to unfold all the beautiful layers to find it. You laid with them in bed. You ran after her. You weren’t relieved. You watched the window glow from outside. You remember marches better than the others. You read and read and read. You are an ancestor of your time. You underestimated the weight of that. You can’t really identify what’s particularly wrong. You are always needing something more than what you already have. You are a puppet in a play. You are conceiving. You find it harder to be yourself in winter. You dived in headfirst. You said, ‘it’s not like she’s been gone for months and months’. You cried over the balcony silently. You’re starting to find flowery language almost intolerable. You are still left pondering the woman who acted as the grim reaper. You came up for air. You brush through her blonde hair. You were deeply breathing. You remember how mum would talk on the phone, the landline cord wrapping around her wrist. You are having an amazing time, like an artistic sabbatical. You are so ready to keep dedicating yourself to this. You really do write like your mother. You swerved instead of breaking. You made eye contact for 80% of the class. But you believe this is the process of expansion. You said why not, take the leap. You sat on the sand in complete awe. You watched your legs collapse. You talk to him in your head all the time. You’re staring at this sunset through the plane and you are feeling everything. You swung yourself over the edge of the railing. You had come back to baseline. You cannot touch it all. You thought about writing for the entire ride. You opened the car door. You kept talking and he plucked purple flowers from the bush outside the house, penetrating their stems through your hair. You slept, pretended to sleep for 30 more minutes. You’re lying on the State Library steps, the sun has come out. You like listening to music when you’re writing and prefer it comes from him. You held his machete in one hand, and his son in the other while he ripped out tobacco plants. You cried when you met his family. And you want him to see that. You went to radio poetry. You drank. You don’t know who you are without it. You find it so hard to start but once you do…You aspire to make art that feels like this. You are willing to wait, before you couldn’t. You want to be played using all 10 fingers. You are so glad to let yourself have happiness. You were drowning in it. You kept staring. You can’t hear. You remember when you were a teenager, getting up and telling mum you were hungry. You think of him always in those intervals. You will not wait for a life to be given to you. You’ll find him in the green. You are alive. You are not in control. You drove off. You can’t stop listening. You are growing a new leaf every day. You crave more depth, long term you mean. You want to be soft-spoken. You could go on. You taste blue. You don’t think so. You adored the use of water as a symbol. You were forgiven. You like waiting. You are dancing. You stayed in a rosebud shape. You have never been more feminine in your life. You ask her for photographs. You have the same fantasy now. You have this daydream often. You keep seeing the same image, the same montage in your head. You have arrived. To your surprise, the answer is yes.

ABOUT MIRANDA ABBOTT

Miranda Abbott is an emerging writer from Naarm (Melbourne), Australia studying a Bachelor of Creative Writing at RMIT. Her practice explores hidden memory and the body’s role in writing. Her work has been published in The Big Issue, RMIT’s Catalyst Magazine and Baby Teeth Journal. She is currently interning with the Stella Prize. Miranda uses writing as a means of contemplation.

You can contact her through mirandaabbott.com.au

Stories Connecting Us