Brendan Cowell

Where did my friend go? Was there a place they all gathered, the lost and self destructive? Was there a room they put them in? Necks burnt with rope or holes in their skulls. Beach-water bloated. I will know this at the end of my conversation with life. I will speak and laugh until my tongue falls out and then I will know this. I will know because he will tell me when I see him. How will I enter the theatre? With a hole in my head or exploded by sea. Wrists.

Because it was all I wanted to fucking know. It was all I wanted to know in this fucking world: where did the beautiful boys go? Where did the beautiful boys go? Where the hell did they go?

I loved everything about her, and I didn't care how dark she got. If anything it was what I loved the most, the veil of pain that fell across her face most of the day, and all of the night.

All the tiny things made this mammoth union up, all the times he had picked her up from Sutherland station, made her chicken salad rolls and brought her a Lipton's iced tea, called her about Sunday and fixed Nina's shed door hinge, held her and not fucked her when she was dying with period pain, thought of what she said last night and made something of it the following afternoon, all these unspectacular deposits of love he had made and they were the currency, earning enough to have her see that he was nothing but the right one.

I had no idea how free we were. That's how free I was.