I Have So Much To Tell You

"I have so much to tell you."

I throw it like a fishing line, let it bob and sink into the fluid space between our two rooms. I miss him more as we age, or maybe just the ability to pull the strings suspending him. 

My hook snares, and he glides through double doors, his smooth stride attempting to hide the boy beneath the overgrowth. He flops onto the lounge chair across from me, we sit in the same rowboat, estranged knees eyeing each other. 

I pick through my short-term memory for headlines to toss him. Less of me is transferrable the more worlds I have dipped my toes into. I tug on passing jokes, quote an old friend predicting his great escape the second he can drive himself away. He takes the line from me, painting pictures of sun and surf he is sure to seek. I am seeking something deeper but in moments like this only bubbles gasp at the surface. I sink into my chair, mirroring his manspread. His eyes wander and I watch them land on the phone in his pocket.

“Remember when we would pretend to be mermaids?”

His eyes are mine again, darkened and daring me to continue.

“I wrote something.”

Eyebrow raised, he smiles and says, “Okay,” not asking to hear it. 

“A green blade dances 

through sand, spinning 

I propel past it. 

Follow 

The fish scales

glitter, the sun 

piercing 

waves above. 

A hook plummets past, 

misses my ear by an inch. 

The fish gulps its 

last meal. Death rows 

above in a little wooden boat.”

His reaction arrives diluted. I’m losing him to the girl whose notifications flood his phone. “How is she?” I tease, wiggling eyebrows, probably looking like mum. 

He smiles, sighs and shakes his head. Phone in his lap, I watch him drift from me. I have so much to tell you. I stare into his face, losing softness every day. His cheeks hollow where adolescence smacked him and chiselled off the pieces that I once squished in my hands. He’d repeat phrases in his car seat until I reached over to grab him and scream “just shut up right now!”.

Now I want to tell him that he is my best friend. Instead, I re-enact the awkward man asking for my number at Central station. I stand and over-play gestures, dodging between characters. He laughs at the familiar plot points I've waded through with him before. Patterns of polite rejection. I have been floating about in too many waters, swallowing some that then turned sour within me. 

I slip back into my seat. My eyes glaze over and my stomach gurgles. I readjust to sitting too fast, and reflux returns me my lunch. Sushi-salmon-rice-vinegar-acid-air eats my mouth, but I gulp it back down. I have so much to tell you. 

“I got a B on that assessment you helped me with.”

I swell and smother his passivity with excitement. He smiles at me a little longer before the blue-light whirlpool wins. I swallow the see-what-you-can-do-if-you-try speech. The guilt of never being home creeps up the back of my throat. 

In primary school I had a project on endangered animals. I chose the butterfly fish and made him the star of my live-action film. He fit head to toe on the width of our parents’ bed. Beneath him was a green-blue-turquoise doona ocean habitat. Decked out in the foam fins and chest plate I’d cut and sketched with texters, he swam. When I told him to “move like a fish," he did. He even puckered his lips. 

“One day I’ll see one.”

He looks tired of me, awaiting elaboration. 

“A mermaid. Did you see the reel I sent you?” 

“Yeah. You know, if mermaids are real, they’re evil.” 

How many years did I sustain the Santa charade for him? He looks at me like a warped reflection, “sometimes I feel like the older sibling.” That will bruise.

The one camping trip we took, I learnt to fish. It was the middle of winter. I was learning to throw out the line, watch it fly. I watched it fly right across the narrow river and land in the bush on the other side.  

My mouth tastes like metal. I grasp at slippery topics to feed him, to keep him. I am opening and closing, empty. How often do I start my sentences with remember? If mermaids are real, they’ll be washing up soon. Wrinkled on the shore, crusty, naked, dying. 

Someone calls him from the other room. Head turned, the hook slips from his mouth. He is carried away by the current. I have so much to tell you.

I am left sitting in the room alone, bobbing in my tipping dinghy, swayed by the ripples in his wake.