A Language of Limbs

by Dylin Hardcastle

The first love of a teenage girl is a powerful thing, particularly when the object of that desire is her best friend, also a girl. It’s the kind of power that could implode a family, a friendship, a life.

A Language of Limbs is about love and how it’s policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak.

An unashamed celebration of queer life in all its vibrancy and colour, this story finds the humanity in all of us, and demands we claim our futures for ourselves.

For those who I have loved quietly

I spend recess and lunchtime in the school library. The air is stuffy, but the librarians know me by name, and on Wednesday, they share their morning tea cake with me. Here, I get to exist between books. Tiny worlds open up to me and become big. I go somewhere else, into the blackened woods of old fairytales, into the blinding white of future stars. I read and read and read.

We descend a set of stairs, narrow as a throat, into the belly of the bar. Dave walks between the tables, nodding his head and smiling at people he seems to know. I meander behind him, hands in my jumper pockets. The sunken room smells of tobacco smoke and spirits and beer-sodden coasters. It’s noisy down here, warm and muggy, but not uncomfortable, because something about this place feels like an embrace, like hot breath on skin, like the curve of a caring smile. Like catching your friend’s gaze in a crowd and thinking, oh . . . there you are.

I think, look at us. Witness us. In a world that wishes for our annihilation, here are our bodies, spectacularly colliding.

We party towards Hyde Park, in bursts of vibrant colour, hairspray, glitter and pulsating song. Singing and laughing and swaying and kissing. Becoming emboldened, growing louder, riotous as hot hell. So much so that I begin to feel desperately alive, like my body is the underside of a warm, sparkling sea. I am so full of tropical ocean. All coral forest and wild fish.

I think sometimes of the ‘closet’, the place, the word and its attachments. A closet, after all, is a small space. It exists within a home, but it is starved. There is no light in there, no air, no room to fuck, no place to sleep. It is safe, for a time, perhaps. But a body in there will erode.

Until its flesh is all gone and it becomes a secret of bones. To come out is to escape the secret, to stretch your limbs and bathe your skin in light. Sometimes. Because to come out can also be a sharper death, a quicker death. Total obliteration.

When we went back home to my village, for years I was drawing all kinds of beautiful outfits. I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer . . . She laughs now, as if the very idea was ludicrous. I ask, why didn’t you? Gwen says, I got married.

It’s these words, I realise . . . words that I have held for almost ten years, stored deep in muscle . . . And now they are let go. I feel them, dissolving into my blood like ice into ocean.

The air on King Street is damp and heavy with the promise of a storm, the sky gathering itself, holding its breath, becoming rich with darkness.

Are you okay? she asks. I shake my head and tell her, I just keep thinking . . . even if we were to live to one hundred, that still feels like such a grossly inadequate amount of time. Caragh kisses me on the mouth. I think we are lucky, she says, to feel like there isn’t enough time.

Thomas looks at me, visibly mortified by his parents flirting with each other. I grin at this, at the loud racket in the room, at the heartiness of it all. This moment, split open like an oyster, warm brine flowing out, tastes joyous.

inhibitions

Remembering the summers languid and the parties heaving, wishing, always, to return to that beautiful before, the one in which we swam and fucked without fear, the one in which everyone was living and alive.