I lay in bed last night thinking "What shape is an elephant?". A distraction to avoid the things coming in from the edges. The smell when you walk in, wrong, bodily, embarassing. The framed prints on the walls, Denise Drysdale, Souths Football Club, Premiers 1933. The halls, glimpses of rumpled beds, empty beds, veiled beds. A middle aged nurse with a hair-sprayed coif, a young pregnant nurse with tiny black braids.
We arrive in the 'living' room, where yellow skinned old people are waiting, waiting. Some sleep reclined while their mouths gape, one flops forward coughing, gurgling, rasping. A man walks across the room, tries the patio door but finds it locked. He'll be back to try the same door another four times in our hour long visit.
Pa, I will remember you, a tall, straight man with a white moustache and a warm smile. Limping happily around the hydrangeas in the yard, shifting letters in the printing press in the garage.
An elephant is whatever shape you can manage.
