We weren't lovers like that or at least it didn't seem like it you understand. We were on a castaway island made of iron and we were waiting for it to sink in the sea like an atlantis for the new democracy. We had met several times over coffee on the mainland and she had spoken highly of my rouge lips and long locks and I had found her charming the way she was oh I don't know barren I guess you could say in the eyes and the fingers.
Then we went aboard. I was following her back. Following her away from the secret that would keep me there again would touch me later and make my eyes go funny and my forehead grow in shape and proportion. You see because I was a woman with a lawn and an infant and a stern reprimanding husband who talked soft but used those words against me later on.
So we left for the island and I fell asleep on the boat and she said I couldn't stay too long this time but I had her apartment to go back to and I had a dream and I was dreaming of a movie and the two of us sitting hushed like a riot in the distance with our backdrop the sea and she was saying now don't you worry about the lights going off back at your house now alright because I know that's what you're thinking but that is not for you and you knew that all along and you don't know what you need but I know what you said over coffee and it wasn't that you were cheery with his return. I know what goes on now back there and I (only she was whispering by this point and I had knocked off) just think you need to go to america or something and I know you could never love me your not that kind of girl just a momentary glimpse before you leave for another part of this desolate country and another hot heaping male that gets gooey one night and tricks you into thinking everything's alright.
The weekend was slow and the hours drew out and pretty soon I found myself watering the plants back at her apartment. Years later a picture would turn up faded and grey of me and this australian girl and I would think to myself what I'd done in that corner of the world and who I'd pretended to be before I came home.