A dragonfly is wedged dead behind the photograph of the swimmer, its wings visible like a pair of inverted stained glass rabbit ears. Shellac. Only Gab will know that it's been there for some time. I lift the frame away from the wall but the dry insect remains there and I won't touch it lest it disentegrates to powder in my hand, more moth-like, lacking structure. And tonight, another mini version hovers above the red sheets on the bed. I'll find it deceased in some corner later, I know.

There is a possum in the garage, a rooster on top of the book shelf and last night's ant near the wooden hand pointing upstairs.

Noonie is thirty-five.

The past is near and foreign. It exists holus bolus in boxes of letters and diaries but, I discover, only selectively, an edited version, in me.

Noonie is a child on a red Christmas bike. She is refusing to have training wheels attached. Our father and grandfather take it in turns to run beside her holding up the bike until she gets her balance. It is Scone in high, quiet, front-of-the-house midday December. They are soon red in the face, like the bike. Noonie is determined.

And that Christmas face paint, once thick in resolute shapes, streams towards the crew necks of our t-shirts as eventually we do bitumen laps sometimes underneath peppercorn trees, sometimes faster near the grandstand.

Alex constructs a black chair and then walks down stairs carrying a cake topped with fruit on a white plate.

The possum is in the jasmine. I am waiting. Noonie is thirty-five.