Poppy Mullins
Content Warning: Ableist language
This is time travel.
You feel no thud.
You don’t straighten your shoulders
and look at a watch
to find the date wrong
as your feet climb over rubble
or out of a broken car.
You just sit at your desk
the words on the screen in front of you, dark lines drawn by a child with stomach pain.
You don’t slide your hand off the glass of the table
listening for a deep grinding sound,
you just let a red bubble of pain expand tight round the back of your neck.
You look down and find yourself gripping the wooden border of your school desk,
trying to count backwards from zero
taking five increments off
until you’ve lost count.
You watch
the teacher’s brow
dig a furrow so deep
it leaves no shadow on her skin.
She slides out a lilt of concern,
the background hum of her pre-exhale
puffing her words up to frustration:
‘Do you find it difficult to subtract numbers
in your head?’
Your tongue is too wet
with the muffled weight of the truth
to answer.
You dig your palms into
the greenish-yellow streak of old paint
in the centre,
excrement from a time
when daubing stick figures with paint
was the most valuable task
you could achieve.
You don’t get to hide your shame
by catching the wide-eyed glance of a classmate.
In fact, the humming static in your ears
keeps clogging reason.
You pause the kitchen radio
of your mind, ears tumbling
to register the tone of her speech
and the gaps
between each sentence.
All these are irrelevant details to you now, of course. The bubble of pain keeps expanding.
It pops, just towards the end
of the teacher’s speech
in a statement spoken in the manner
of a tired mother coaxing a toddler
to put down a toy:
‘I can’t keep giving you
thinking time forever.
You need to learn
to be more independent.’
The white-hot glare of the screen leers up at you.
The words still don’t come.
A week later your protagonist has no external motivations.
It takes you ten minutes to describe pain.
The bubble sits on the edge of your ear this time.
It worms its way in.
Your radio picks up too-bright chatter spoken in too-loud voices.
The metal rim on the edge of your desk hurts your fingers if you clutch it for too long.
To the right of you sits a new teacher aide:
a woman whose sunspots
sit on her cheeks
like the fossils of tiny ants
made fat with years of cigarette feasting
scattered over
nervous flabs of skin.
You look down at the worksheet in front of you.
The equals sign sits there
like a broken pen
dropping ink onto a full page.
She asks you
five times over
the correct line to put it on.
You reply six times.
She can’t hear you.
Moments pass.
She asks you
for the next number.
The fur of heat
clings to your neck.
The logical answer is to
let the equation stretch out,
to focus on letting your head
finish the sequence, but the
drawling accent of the
pseudointellectual boy
with the quiff
who always sits behind you
is just a bit too loud
and the classroom clock
is ticking a bit too near your eyeline
and the teacher aide
is asking you
about where she should place
the vinculum on the page
and her ear
is tilted away from you.
You do shout:
‘Place it above the nine and the six!’
Your voice is quiet though,
for the sake of respecting
your new employee.
You look around the room,
hyper-attuned to the footsteps
close to your desk,
pine for them
to flick the pencil
from the teacher aide’s hand
and without once interrupting,
allow you to finish
the sum.
A day later
you call for a ceasefire
from the computer.
You thumb through that same notebook,
the question still there
unanswered.
In your ears
you hear a faint pop.
You place your hand
on the back of your neck.
The muscle is smooth.
It feels light.
The last time you look at the screen
the words are right,
the spacing’s correct,
tone wilts
underneath the metal grip
of each word,
each comma,
each metaphor.
This time, you run a finger
over the glass of the table.
Still, there is no noise
as it warps
into an office desk.
There are no objects in the room
to tell you how to hold your tongue, or
speak before she does, or
wrench the mouse
out of her hands
so that it lands on the right document.
There’s just the things that you can remember:
acrylic nails on a keyboard;
the huff
of breath
from your new case manager –
a title made
of Time’s boots kicking dead
the hours required
for teacher aides and teachers
to sit and talk with students
in voices that do not scoff at the slow steps of ideas,
that do not use upward inflections
as weapons – the other clues you notice are
(these make your skin crawl)
that it was the wrong essay;
her ready-made
flash of a smirk:
‘Did you get much feedback
on this assignment?’
‘Y-yes.’
The smirk grows wider.
‘What did they say?’
‘That I hadn’t made my point clear.’
It’s gone from her lips now.
She tilts her head to one side,
pats your shoulder,
‘It’s just about retraining yourself
to not focus on what the teacher aide is doing.
It’s about you focusing on you.’
The pat she gives your shoulder
feels a bit hard this time.
She huffs again:
‘See, what you should be saying here
is that William Paley grew up religious.
You need to give more background on him.’
Time speeds up now
and the truth
prods at my tongue, slipping out
of its plastic sleeve.
‘Ac-actually, Miss,
we’re meant to be
analysing the argument
without historical context.
That’s why I haven’t talked about it.’
The clock on the wall next to me
is ticking too loud.
She leans over
and looks me right in the eye.
Fear makes me think
that her gaze is made
of real anger.
But her voice is just tight
in the way that people use
when they’re trying to show you
they dislike you.
‘Do you want to get an A?’
Time is gone.
My thoughts slow to static.
I have moments
to give the reply of a proper student,
to explain
without hesitation
that my head
creates ideas as smooth
as a printer.
Instead, the clock is too loud.
So I choose a small voice.
‘Miss, I really, really don’t think
that I need to mention
anything historical.
That’s not what they’re marking us on.’
I sit in the humidity of silence
as she shakes her head at me
and shoves the computer
back into my bag.
Now,
you come back.
You stop.
You breathe in.
A voice whispers to you then.
Soft, urgent.
You smile before you respond.
The line comes out.
Humming air clears
and you feel cold.
The words show up on the page.
Author: Poppy Mullins (she/her) is an aspiring writer of domestic gothic fiction that explores how far the social model of disability can excuse the enacting of immoral behaviour from young people with physical disabilities stuck in environments where they cannot express their deepest thoughts, regardless of how violent those thoughts might be. Poppy is also interested in exploring how existing in different spaces as a young person with a physical disability impacts the creative ambitions of those seeking to find a place in the mainstream art sector.
As a part of this, Poppy’s particular ambition is to explore how different subcultures of music help young individuals with physical disabilities navigate the challenges of finding a pathway through the mainstream art sector, with a focus on finding positive rather than cathartic outcomes.
Artist: Damon King is a mature age student in the third and final year of a BFA in Creative Writing at QUT. Over the past decade, being an artist of mixed media owned and dominated the creativity side opposed to my writing. Street art and graffiti was the starting point, then came multiple exhibitions, studios, and showings on professional levels. Artwork being purchased and commissioned from all over the world while building up a healthy presence on social media and travel-got my name out there. My writing has just re-discovered itself in the past few years, and it has been an exciting ride so far, so I am very interested to see where this takes me… @skullcapper @5kullc4p @johnnymahogany F.B Skull Cap (Brisbane artist)
Edited by: Ricky Jade and Benjsmin Forbes