Taking back the Words
Originally published in Ticonderoga Online December 2008
Dust.
There was a taste of dust in Nick's mouth.
Dust that coloured his hand orange-red and dulled the surface of the silver ring on his finger.
The ring. Kylie.
Oh God, Kylie. His groan was a deep guttural sound like it came from the earth itself, a sound that didn't belong to him and yet it did, a sound that mingled with peaceful chirping of . . . zebra finches?
Nick pushed himself up. Finches twittered in straggly, leafless bushes surrounding the patch of red earth on which he sat. To his right, a clump of Spinifex lay in pieces as if cleaved by a giant axe. A skid-mark stopped on the other side and next to that was a wheel. A wheel and the ruins of a bumper and the road-blackened underside of a car.
