Not that my hair is much better these days.
???
Across the road, I stare at the power lines, remembering myself around that age.
Standing on the corner of Miles and Macrossan, I’d believed it with all my heart.
Even more than I believed in Santa.
I believed that if I followed those power lines they’d lead somewhere magical.
Brisbane, maybe.
That was one of my favourite words to whisper to myself as I played in the yard.
Or sometimes when I fell asleep at night.
Brisbind, I called it when I was younger.
Brisbind. Brisbind. Brisbind.
Before I left school three years ago, I once found a map of Australia.
When I searched for Jundah it wasn’t there.
Not even a dot.
But Longreach was.
And Brisbane looked so close at that size.
Only the length of three tiny thumbs across the page.
Brisbane probably has a Maccas.
I saw one on the TV at my friend's house.
I’ve always wanted to try fries.
Used to tell my mum that we should walk down the road to get there.
The road was a basic zigzag on that map.
“We can eat our fries at the top of a skyscraper,” I’d say. “We can touch the clouds.”
That’s as big as fifty or a hundred houses on top of each other.
Even bigger than my gum tree, which is the tallest thing I’ve ever seen.
Back then I thought everything cost a dollar.
I told my mum we could buy a house with my one dollar coin from Mrs Ambrose.
“Let’s live near the beach,” she’d whisper under my blankets.
A house with lots of keys and padlocks on the door.
Because we’d never let Dad inside.
