City Exchange
I order my eyes off Amazon, my spine off eBay
and a cochlear implant straight from Coles.
Falling apart in reverse has never been
so seamless. We talk about moving to the city
(permanently, in parenthesis:
city as a homogenous w/hole
because we can’t see the specific suburbs yet)
but it’s crumbling in its own catharsis, a release
from structure and history. I’m nostalgic,
neurotic and in the process
of learning semiotics, signifying nothing and searching
for home and meaning in a postcard, the latest
neurochemical upgrade and failed relationship. The advertisement
on the high-rise
for GMHBA glitches to a teaser trailer flickers to Coca-Cola:
the duality of (hu)man.
I take
The Frankston line between Southern Cross and Flinders
train rides my liminal stage
where I can watch people yawn in the latest fashion
and flick through a book page or two on the commute
which won’t be remembered. I turn
twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five
Body machine the old biological clock running in analogue
and cellular death. Not a teenager, or a young adult:
am I a human yet? I now feel
the cynicism I only used to perform
now too apathetic to bother expressing
the dissatisfaction in vogue. I flicker in industrial space,
vague.
About the author
Brianna Bullen is a Deakin University PhD candidate writing a creative thesis exploring the possibilities for memory imagined in science fiction. She has had work published in journals lincluding LiNQ, Aurealis, Verandah, Voiceworks, Rabbit and Peril. She won the 2017 Apollo Bay short story competition and placed second in the 2017 Newcastle Short story competition.
