Brianna McCarthy
“Sand Dreams”
If you want to come with me
I can take you to a place
Share a little dream
While the first blush is still soft...
In a landscape inhabited by shifting yellow rocks, their godly bodies sit on haunches and let the weather smooth over their backs. A calm slope, where your feet need to hold on for grip to crumbling sand, leads you down to a basin. The sunlight has laid out on your shoulders, painted a red streak across the bridge of your nose. The giants hum with low voices as your sandals tickle down their earthen forms. It’s barren on the heights save you and a seagull. The seagull stares, follows you as you go.
I’d like to eat a slice of watermelon up upon these rocks, with its crunching, slurping sounds. Feel that sweet juice slither, cold, down my sunlit belly.
A drop or two land on your thigh. You drink it up like clouds in the sky. Smacking and licking pink lips, dragging teeth till the rind turns white. Leave a piece for the seagull that stands on the hill over your shoulder. They just might answer if you knew the right question to ask…
The weather turns quietly to grey. Clouds settle on the horizon. The beach licks at her paws, lets you walk by.
Wet sand. Heavy
Clouds like soaked cotton
Salt on the tongue
Soft underfoot
The foam sinks, reveals crab holes.
Oyster shells. Sharper than you’d think.
Still, there’s that drunk humming from the stones.
The rocks watch you scuttle about.
My love was torn once
Scorned by the sea
Jagged scars across his legs from when he fled
From one of these spirits
Through the faraway rock pools that glitter black at night
He came home to me dripping with
Shreds of red skin
But he still returns to the place as I do
Showed it to me first, really.
I better go back to him…
See where he’s at...
As I wake, my sweet pup wriggles and stretches his paws to the melting sky. I know the place waits for me, to come paint its picture. But today has my cheek nuzzled into purple sheets, and I’ll start perhaps, with a cup of tea.
Can I make you one too?
Brianna McCarthy is an Aboriginal emerging artist working on Darug land. She practises a variety of artforms such as writing, theatre-making, film-making, visual arts, puppetry, and teaching. In 2019 she wrote and directed her debut play 'A Game For Flies', which played at PYT Fairfield. Her practise often revolves around experimenting with wonder, love, and relationships with more than human species, sharing a personal dreaming of this fantastical world.