All Our Shimmering Skies

by Trent Dalton

‘The heart doesn’t turn to stone right away. It takes time to take hold because the heart is warm and it keeps beating and it keeps fighting against all that cold stone. But, soon enough, it all turns and then you feel nuthin’.

Every last dark thing she’s witnessed so far today. And she wonders what mysterious, unstoppable force must be flowing inside that girl to make her do what she is doing up there on that road now. The gravedigger girl, skipping.

‘Like how pretty it all really is,’ Molly replies. ‘Who decided that gold would be worth so much, anyway? I’d take this feller over a gold pebble any day of the week.’

She rests a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘My dad was all right. He had his problems but he still loved me. He did.’ And Molly wants to cry in front of these crocodiles. And maybe this is what people mean when they talk about crocodile tears: what you shed when you talk to crocodiles about your dead dad. Cry, Molly, cry. They’ll let you pass if you cry for them. Cry, Molly, cry. But she can’t. And she tilts her head up to find the sky but there’s no sky to be seen this far up Candlelight Creek.

Personification for grief

She stares into the fire and the fire plays the flickering film reel of her life