T.L
T.L writes fiction, short fiction, poetry, and reviews. Her work has been published in Mascara, Cordite, Southerly, Best Australian Poems 2014, and Griffith Review, among others. In 2016 she won the Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature. Her second novel, Autumn Leaves, 1922, was released in August 2021 by Pegasus Books USA. She has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University. She lives on Bidjigal land in Sydney.
Butterfly
A butterfly battles across Parramatta Road. It’s big and black, with white eyes on its wingtips. Even so, the wind in this storm-season is strong and each car and truck that rumbles beneath it sends fresh blasts to blow it off course. It tries to reach the other side of the highway, but it keeps falling, struggling up and then falling on to the road and almost smashed. Then it rises again, against the wind, against the traffic’s displaced air. I wait in my car and the radio blasts, a doctor from the children’s hospital in Kyiv, the broadcaster prompts him, the boy was six, he had bullet wounds, yes, in his chest, his abdomen, his head. The trucks are constant, the cars, the noise incessant. It’s not gridlock and the heavy vehicles, dirty after all the rain, barrel down the hill. The radio continues, the doctor’s words are scattergun, the baby had wounds. Yes. Shot wounds. Yes, the baby was shot in the head. They shot the ambulance. The Russian soldiers, yes. The ambulance called me. On the way to the hospital. The baby died. The butterfly crosses at the lights, where I wait, trying to get home before the next onslaught of flooding storm. The butterfly pushes itself up and up, black wings in a grey sky, up and up. The radio drones on, another city, another basement, I’m in Mariupol, still, I can’t get out. I saw them, my neighbours. They are on the road now, a mother and her boy and her girl. Before they were on the road, they went up, higher than the roof of the church, it seemed impossible, they went up and up, they were flying. Up and up, black wings in a grey sky, up and over the truck, over the next truck, it dips and is almost smashed, then it rises, it reaches the other side of the highway and the trees that stand staunch against the heavy, threatening sky.