CHANGES
- Jun 6
- 1 min read
By Damen O'Brien
Three changes of lights occur before she has the nuts undone.
The crunch and drum of wheels griping through the intersection
are like a murmur or a mantra or The Beatles played backwards.
She watches two cars run the lights on successive reds, daring
the camera to flash. The cameras blink as belatedly as a hangover.
Butcher birds gargle out their chorus in a tree nearby and magpies
scrape their washboard calls up and down her spine.
The man in the boot of her car has started moaning now, the sound
of the shuddering jet far above drowning him out. The sun burns
her shoulders, and there are no cars stopping to help her with
the tyre iron. She grimaces at society’s changes: no one stops
to help people change tyres anymore. It’s not until she has
shoved the dead weight of the shredded rubber into the ditch
and wiped her knees, that she considers how she’ll reach the spare.