Living with De Chirico, by Brenda Saunders

Living with De Chirico       
             
Mystery strikes a pose in black and white. Vanishing points meet out of sight. Caught in chequered light, figures stand apart, make no connection. They wait for the bar on the piazza to open at five. Fingers scroll for the action playing on-screen. Dressed in the neutrality of grey they fall into shadow, set pieces in a scenario defined by others. Faceless people wait for change, for portals to open, offer a new reality on-line. 

The sun draws in the chill at the end of an autumn day. On the square, a figure stands alone at the fountain, aware of the stillness. She checks an app to find her true direction, finds safety in slanting shadows, open arcades. Isolation is her present fear. Caught in the ambiguity of reflected light, the girl looks for her ideal self in empty windows. Dances a routine. Posts her new persona on Instagram.
                                                          
Sunday afternoons. The courtyard is deserted. White light signals an impending storm. Shadows edge into corners. A CCTV surveys each colonnade. Words sharpen, echo across balconies. Rising voices ricochet off a column. A silent couple search for "friends" on Facebook. Heels graze terrazzo. Steel chairs scrape a square of sunlight. White heat hits a sliding door. Muffled thunder breaks somewhere inside.

Brenda Saunders

Brenda is a First Nations writer living in Regional Sydney. She has won several prizes and fellowships including the 2014 Scanlon Prize (Australian Poetry) for her collection Looking for Bullin Bullin and in 2018 the Joanne Burns Award for her prose poems on Birding (Spineless Wonders). Her poetry and literary reviews appear in national and international anthologies and journals including Best Australian Prose Poems 2021.