Hunters snow

Hunters in the Snow

My hair made antlers.

*

The sky: coloured lead.

*

‘I’m not enough?’

*

Green was everywhere.

            Green laughed

*

I pointed, ‘That’s new.’ Had I expected skaters still cutting circuits into the ice?

                                                                                                                                                ‘I thought it’d be more green, like in the painting.’

*

Green said.

We had a good view of Ikea on Amrasa-See-Strasse where the lake used to be.

*

 ‘Things change,’

*

Trees weren’t lined in a perfect diagonal to lead us into the scene; painted white, the church steeple was now difficult to pick out from the snow, and the river was in the wrong place though still rippled like a vein hanging from the teeth of the Alps like a shred of Actaeon.  

*

We had walked a short distance from the Hotel Bierwirt where my husband was sleeping off the previous evening’s overindulgence.

*

We stopped to look across Amras as if we were hunters come home empty handed. Behind us Ambras Castle, its windows cross stitched eyes, birds’ footprints.  

We had walked a short distance from the Hotel Bierwirt where my husband was sleeping off the previous evening’s overindulgence.

Trees weren’t lined in a perfect diagonal to lead us into the scene; painted white, the church steeple was now difficult to pick out from the snow, and the river was in the wrong place though still rippled like a vein hanging from the teeth of the Alps like a shred of Actaeon.  

‘Things change,’ Green said.

We had a good view of Ikea on Amrasa-See-Strasse where the lake used to be.

I pointed, ‘That’s new.’ Had I expected skaters still cutting circuits into the ice? ‘I thought it’d be more green, like in the painting.’ Green was everywhere.

            Green laughed, ‘I’m not enough?’

The sky: coloured lead. My hair made antlers.

Not too tight

What Little Town

           

‘When we’re secure.’ The knot’s too tight.

A bright red double decker hisses, honks to a stop. The top’s missing, full of tourists. Here is the church, here the steeple. Look inside. Hunter stops tugging at his tie, gives me his dog carried from the battlefield look. ‘We’ve only been here a month, another, few, we’ll be set.’ He pulls the curtain.

‘I’m late.’

‘Me too. Don’t make dinner.’ The door doesn’t bang.

*

Hunter’s back when the street’s quiet. He hands me a bag, flicks the light on.

‘Art & Antiques,’ cover, Paperweight, 1987, Beverly Hallam: blue and silver glass the size of a tennis ball, plus a vase of white flowers holding down shadows of blinds guillotined by sunlight. I drop it on the bedside.

*

‘Let me.’ Hunter takes the sheets. ‘Cheer up – look on the table.’

It’s the wrong colour and the light goes right through it.

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June is National Flash Fiction Month for New Zealand. This piece is for the Aotearoa Affair Blog Carnival's celebration of flash fiction: Across Borders. Thanks to Dorothee Lang and Michelle Elvy for including it.