Elevator Music?

Mother (mummy,mum,mom,mam) is peering curiously through the silts in the blinds of our living room window.

"Where," she asks suddenly,"did all those flowers come from?"

For a moment, all activity ceases to steal furtive look across the street, registering the pink orange summer colours lining our neighbour's drive way.

"Landscaping," says Father (daddy,dad,dude) finally.

Half remembering."They called in garden landscapers yersterday."

"Oh."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"It smells like Australia again." I mention casually because the window is open and it's drafty but the sunlight finds us and we can almost forget that there isn't a heater in this room and that the florescent lighting wasn't once again diluting any fun we would try to have.

"Really? Australia has a smell?"

"Yeah, it's like when you just step out of the airport, it hits you, scent of Australia..." I wave my hands around a little, expecting somehow, mutual understanding.

Brows furrow. "Really. What does Singapore smell like then?"

like burning asphalt ground and unwilling congealed sweat, like milk tea at 3am in the morning without getting bashed if you felt like it although i hated milk tea, like too sweet kaya toast and plastic a very persistent scent of artifice, like surly clouds and heavy thunderstorms,
like home (is, was, still, perhaps, forgotten)

"Like heat," i say inconsequentially, "humid." Colourless answers.

He is unimpressed. So am I.

Australia smells like bottled sunshine.

The cherry blossoms are already fading.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am still surprised when people use my name. In my head I am a constant 'you' or 'i'. Like absurd narcissistic love songs to myself.

Beverley, Beverly, Bev.

What belongs to you yet others use more than you do?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's a bloody beautiful day.