hush your voice child, listen softly

song: a thousand tiny pieces, the be good tanyas

i am making patterns of the ice ridges that cling fiercely to frozen pavement, my careful footsteps across a busy stage, the way everything comes together and the way everything doesn't.
before last night's performance we circle the paint-stained bathtub wearing ribbon and lace and canvas sacking, passing round a hug and a kiss and the lights come up and they go down and suddenly it is all finished. out of costume and back in streetclothes, we filter into the empty theatre but, in that brief absence, the shadowy faces we'd picked out in the audience have all but deserted us.
looking out cold bus windows, i'm so lost imagining how we look from outside (glowing with sickly yellow light) that we almost miss the bus stop theatre. and inside, the silence of everyone's listening is deafening. the chairs at round tables all twist the same direction. tanya davis sings sweet songs of home and we hug the friends we've been waiting for and the ones we didn't know we'd find. on the otherside of midnight, amelia curran comes onstage, the plaidshirt rainboot roadies become the mercy band, and they dance with their instruments in the early morning stillness.