Speculations on a Wonderful Stranger (From the Diary of Marcus Grey) by Bianca Butler

Senior Poetry entry

There’s a girl at my university.
I think I’m gonna marry her.

I didn’t know it straight away.
The first time I remember seeing her,
She was wearing two different coloured shoes.
I smiled.
I liked that.

The next time was in a swell of people exiting a lecture hall.
She had iPod earphones plugged into her ears.
But I could see the end of the wire
Poking out the bottom of her belt.
I knew it wasn’t connected to anything.
I had to chuckle.
She was still humming along.

The third time was across the campus café.
I was eating the same stir-fry vegetables
That used to give me the trots.
She was sitting all alone
Except for her book.
She had a milkshake, but the straw kept sliding away from her.
She didn’t want to take her eyes off the page
So she chased the straw around using only her tongue.
She looked ridiculous.
And that’s when I decided I’d marry her.

I used to see her a lot
Heading into the Student Services building.
I wondered if she had a bunch of problems with her enrolment.
Or if she was here illegally.
I didn’t find out until some months later
That the Student Services building had the cleanest toilets on campus.
That’s the only reason she went.

She was a germophobe.
(She still is.)
She told me that once, in the library.
It was between Asian Theatre
And the history of Rock and Roll.
She made a tower
Out of books that hadn’t been catalogued properly.
And she walked around, putting them in the right spots.
She said that she had a social problem,
And that made her different.
I said it didn’t matter.
I said I had a problem, too.
Co-ordination.
And balance.
She didn’t believe me.
I accidentally fell into a library stack,
And all its books toppled on her.
She believed me then.

Her father was a geologist.
He wrote books.
(The kind that don’t have any pictures.)
My father was a drunk.
He read books.
(Only the kind that have pictures.)
I often wondered how they’d get on.

She walks with a slight limp.
Nothing very obvious.
Just a little personal quirk.
I like it.
If I walk beside her, on her left,
She kind of leans into me.
It’s nice.

It was her birthday two weeks ago.
I bought her a fish.
She named him Grover.
(Somehow she knew it was a boy.
I had no idea.)
Grover has a treasure chest
And plankton
And a little machine
That makes bubbles.
She likes to sit up in bed at night
And tell him stories.
His favourite is about a pirate with a wooden leg.
(And scurvy.)
At least, she says that it is.
I believe her.

I came for tea two nights ago.
Her mother boiled potatoes.
She served them up with asparagus quiche.
(They’re both vegans.)
The potatoes weren’t cooked right through to the middle,
But I didn’t say anything.
The mother had heavy bags under her eyes
And the potato seemed fine to her.
So I pretended it seemed fine to me, too.
After dinner, the girl scuttled off
To put jazz on, or something.
The mother lit up her cigarette.
She asked me which way my mother voted.
Liberal, I said.
She asked me which way my father voted.
Donkey, I said.
Me too, she said.
I told her I’d like to marry her daughter.
The kettle whistled
And she filled up my coffee mug.
The jazz was nice.

I’ll ask her today.
I’ve made a picnic,
With bread rolls and a big choc chip cookie
(We can split it).
My roll has cheese and tomato on it –
It’s one of the two kinds I know how to make.
She doesn’t like that cheese comes from cows
Or sometimes goats,
So hers just has tomato on it.
That’s the only other kind I know how to make.

The picnic blanket has a stain on it
From another picnic,
Ten years past,
When I spilled the Pepsi.
But she doesn’t mind.
She lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can see a puppy
And a bicycle
And a pirate with a wooden leg
(And probably scurvy).
She asks me what I can see.
I lie on my back beside her and look up at the sky.
Her in a wedding dress, I say.
And me standing beside her.
She says she can see that, too.

Her fingers creep between mine.
I warn her that I might fall into something again.
I tend to over-balance to my right.
She says not to worry.
She’ll walk on my right
And I’ll walk on her left.
I’ll fall into her
And she’ll lean into me.

And it’ll be nice.