THE spring is winter cold and my stomachs full of dread. The walls in the bathroom cry with morning dew, I brush my teeth, the sink has a crack in it.

The morning needs a long wool coat and my hair tucked inside my sweater. The cat is angry at me for leaving again today. Everlastings grow on the sidewalk and I remember how the summer I was thirteen I ripped them from their beds, stitched them together and wore them on my head.

I walk to the coffee shop at quarter past seven, keep my hands in my pocket on the way. I sit with the newspaper and skip the news, do the crossword in my head.

The bus to the train station is full and I realise I know all these faces now. On the train people would rather stand than sit next to you. I wait at the platform and stare at the tracks, I wonder how many of us are thinking the same thought. When its time to board we forget our manners, I watch the door way, it opens, grows full of well-dressed people pushing and shoving each other. Sometimes I am amongst them.

The train ride is long and full of suffering. The morning is a dream like all my mornings have been, I feel far from my body. And on this commute I stare out the window, the view changes every second. I’m aware that I have a face but I suddenly can’t remember what it looks like or where it is. I can feel the numbing cream of the cold season over all my thoughts.

When we pass the ocean I feel seasick. And when we reach the shipping containers I have to look away, because, for no reason at all I can not bear the sight.

In Fremantle the store fronts are purple. The streets have become home to many. Some have blankets and socks, others have blue toes. I am cold in my wool coat.

My dad sits at the church across from the library and smokes a hand rolled cigarette, near him there’s a man sleeping on a park bench holding a bottle wrapped in brown paper.

I’m growing to know winter as a feeling that I can not begin to unfeel.

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HEM: In conversation with Mabel Gibson