for both my sisters

It is black and cold outside. My sister knocks at my door and we move together, starting up the road. Our house is positioned mid-way in a valley, half way up or down, at that mid point. Down is a dead end. To go anywhere, we have to hike up over a hill (the one to the front, the one to the side, or the one at the back).

We walk fast up the hill in front. This is the best hill to walk up: there is a little dip before it slowly and steeply curves up. It is quiet; no one else is out on the street, or even awake it seems; lights are off inside houses.

When we reach the top of the hill, we turn left and start to jog. There are no cars out at this time, so we can claim the road as our own. The road follows a ridge; it inclines and curves a little, past the kindergarten we both went to, and then it descends gently. This is the nice stretch; legs are moving, breath is coming out into the cold air, we are jogging past an orange street light feeling good. The road turns and we cross the train bridge; now and then we’ll see the Overland coming through, arriving from Melbourne.

A big steep hill is right in front; here the run really starts. Down to our right – if you leap over a fence and roll downhill – is the freeway, also connecting to Melbourne. A few cars are moving along, their lights illuminating the way to Adelaide.

Somewhere around this time, I notice that the sky is changing. It’s gone from black, to black-blue. I hear some birds; I see the outlines of trees. Then it’s blue-black. Then that faint silvery blue that appears like a mist until suddenly it floods the sky, always happening so quickly.

We’re still running. Keeping up a steady rhythm fills up my mind; there’s no room for feeling amazed. But before this light comes, before the world sharpens back into the definitive real, there is a space that I remember now, about twelve years later. In that space the world is blue-black and I am jogging with my sister in a land of cut outs by jan pienkowski. I don’t need to look over to know that she’s there; things might be made of distinctions and sharp edges, but we’re not. It feels like we’re two arms of the same thing, running along a road through a forest, with the sky huge and beginning to swirl with colour, above us.