two weeks ago..

september 1st 2011
spring in the blossom over the fence
a light blue sky at 5 in the afternoon
Leonard Cohen by my side

two weeks ago today
Tanya 36
a woman from the next street
walked over the railway tracks
into the path of a train
bound for the city
just on lunchtime
just like that
leaving
seven children
and a husband
to carry her broken hallelujah..





just found this.. i wrote it in 2009..

How do I remember her?   Some years ago she lived across the road.  A tall girl, stalky if I had to describe the way she looked.  I noticed there were a lot of kids and they were younger than ours or seemed to be.  It was hard to know how many there were. They were quiet, I remember that.  Our kids would be out in the street kicking the footy or riding bikes or skateboards and the kids across the road hardly made any noise.  The house had been rented out for as long as we’d been living here and people had come and gone.  In the early years Peter would go over with a couple of cakes as a welcome to whoever had just moved in.. I think he would have gone over to say hello to them but I can’t be sure.      So when I went over to say hello, they’d been there for a while and I’d had time to observe her a little. I noticed she always walked to the shops and brought the groceries home in plastic bags.  She’d go up late in the afternoon.  She looked more like a big sister going out to get a few things after school than a mother.