JUSTIN

Mornings are always the same for me. Little thought goes into them. Wake up, shower, dress on autopilot. I leave the house, grab a coffee and jump on a tram. My brain rarely kicks into gear until I am at my desk.

But the other day was different. Coffee in hand, I picked up a free newspaper showcasing Darebin writers. Local scribblers, poets and novelists, that sort of thing. Inside was a poem called Justin.

Justin

Our street looks much the same
patterns of sunlight and shade
Federation houses with
laced verandahs, picket fences
women with green shopping bags
slung across pram handles
boys on skateboards
racing down the centre of the road
a new graffiti message
in large white letters on a brown brick wall
Justin RIP
Bashed at a party brawl
he failed to wake up
He’s rarely mentioned now
but we’re left
with a terrible emptiness
in the house where he lived

Marietta Elliott-Kleerkoper

Justin was 16. I know this because when I couldn’t shake the sense of loss the poem had left me with, I looked him up. A quick search uncovered a newspaper article on his untimely death. There was a photograph of his friends carrying his coffin and behind them his mother’s vacant face stared out. I had a clear snapshot of the moment her life changed forever.

I am part of this. I intrude into people’s lives when least wanted. I stand watching; then try to encapsulate what has happened into a piece of news. I’ve looked up names in a phone book and cold called them. I draw out how they are feeling. I find the saddest comment and make it a sound-bite. Their loss becomes a 40 second radio story. Then I disappear. For me the next day will be different; different strangers; a different story. All the while Justin’s mother walks along her street which looks the same, but isn’t.

Last year at the Melbourne Writers Festival a well known American author described grief as being like a hole inside through which large volumes of air gush out. It makes you catch breath. Ask anyone who has ever lost someone and they will tell you that gapping cavern never disappears. It becomes part of you and you learn to live with it.

I think of Justin’s mother walking down the street lined with federation style houses and picket fences. I wonder if the graffiti remains on the wall. Later she sits at the kitchen table cradling a hot drink. Is she waiting to hear his keys jingle as he arrives home? Or the jarring sound of his bedroom door slammed shut with teenage-angst? Unlike mine, her mornings will never be the same again.

Maybe it’s this snap shot that needs to be told. The picture of a house very much the same but utterly changed. In it, one woman waiting for someone to say her son's name.

BLOOD RED LIPS OF COURAGE

We are often told its confidence that makes a woman sexy. Regardless of size, stature, hair colour or personal style, if a woman is self assured, walks with a strut and is true to herself, men will find her desirable.

So why, once they have the woman who made them dribble with longing, are some men determined to rid her of the very thing that attracted them in the first place?

Its pretty obvious I here you say. They were attracted to her, so why would they then want her to continue to attract other men.

Alluring ways, such as wearing bright lipstick for instance, rarely have anything to do with attracting men, or keeping men for that matter. Its more a wash of confidence, a plate of armour to hide behind. Its war paint. Everyday that woman wakes up and goes through the motions of building up her confidence. She daubs her lips red and it helps, just a little. But the booster can be smeared just as easily as the lip colour.

I have a friend. She is beautiful and tender with a halo of wild blonde curls, topped off with the brightest of bright lipstick. On two occasions she has been told by the men she loves to get rid of the lipstick. The very men who were attracted too her sassy blood red lips simply turned around and criticise her for being, well - her.

She was once told by her man of the moment that he didn’t get why some people had low self-esteem, that he couldn’t comprehend how that could happen. In the company of close friends, as she stood before him in all her glory, he told them her lipstick was not worn for his benefit. Their friends were left with the clear knowledge he wasn’t a fan and the open ridicule smudged her well-placed veneer. Regardless, she remained quiet about his twice-daily ritual of smearing goo on his bald head in the desperate hope he would re-grow hair.

The main difference as I see it was she was compassionate to his insecurities, while he thought everything was about him. I would suggest the reason this man didn’t understand how people’s confidence could be shaken, was because he had been luckily never to have lost his heart to someone LIKE him.

So if you’re of the opposite sex and reading this… take note. The woman in the heels that elongate her legs and make her tits jiggle as she walks; the woman who wears plunging neck lines and short skirts; and the woman with the bright red lips, she does it not for you, but for herself. We all need a way to help us get through the day. This is hers; it is part of who she is. Leave it be.