The Sirens

by Emilia Hart

It is estimated that over 250 languages—reflecting distinct nations with distinct cultures—were spoken in Australia prior to 1788.

A podcast. True crime is her preference, but anything of an investigative bent will do. The soothing drone of a familiar voice, a puzzle for her brain to solve until her thoughts become slow and dulled, exhaustion winning out.

Like the place wants to swallow you whole, and you want to let it.

a voice had valleys and crags, telling you of sadness or delight. You could almost feel it under your fingers, like it was land.

She locked her memories of her mother deep inside her heart. It was easier, she learned, to be angry than to be sad.

If you create a silence, people want to fill it.

The sea gives, but it also takes.

But he had a way of drawing each eye, moths to a lamp, caught even as they burned.

Now, the week is like this: Tuesday feels like grief. Like I’ve lost something I’ll never have again. That feeling stretches into Wednesday, Thursday.

Walking home from school, I look up at the huge sky and feel like the world’s been cracked open just for me.

He’s only in his midtwenties, I think, but in that moment, he could have been a little boy, staring out into a world he didn’t understand. I wanted to put my hands on his face, ask him what he had lost and how.

Most people just want an easy life. It’s unsettling when someone starts pulling apart the stories we’ve stitched together, the things we tell ourselves for comfort.

“Just because you cannot see what is in front of you,” Mary said, “does not mean that you see things others cannot. It does not make you special. Only broken.”

Think about your body—from your toes to your fingertips—and focus on how it feels. Breathe in, then breathe out.” I try this now,

I wondered when the cans of Coke had been replaced by alcohol and felt kind of sad, like one day I’d stopped being a child and hadn’t even noticed.

There’s a passage about how when we sleep, we summon our dreams; like we’re communing with ghosts.

The easiest way to lie to someone, she learned, is to lie to yourself.

How gaining someone could also mean losing them.