here be dragons

This night, eleven years ago, C and I first stood on the edge of a century old wading pool cut into the rocks at Newcastle Beach.

The moon shimmered in the water around us and somewhere at our feet, buried under the sand, was rumoured to be a mosaic map of the world.

If someone had tapped me on the shoulder and said: in eleven years time the man sticking his tongue in your mouth now will also be sticking a needle in the fatty tissue round your bellybutton, I would have laughed and laughed because it seemed so perfect a moment I scarcely dared hope it could last beyond that one night. And then of course I would have screamed like a girl.

There may be nothing more.

No small version of ourselves, no combination of blue eyes and dark hair, anglo and asian, blind optimism and fearful reluctance, hot lust and cold wet tears. A family of two.

But what we hold between us, if not our dream children, are countless shining moments.
Like tiny fish slipping through the tide, bright as the full moon on water or the thrill of a first kiss or the thin flash of steel as it enters my skin.

In the map of our lives there is the unknown and the unknowable. Here be fear and heartache and all the grey islands of grief.


But here? And here? And all of this here?



Here be love.





map pic