I

A young girl dreams. She is saving cash, working, trying to avoid unworthy purchases, skipping lunch, sometimes dinner. She has moved back in with her mother to avoid rent. She has tried to put her hand up for as many shifts as they will give her. She has set up rituals so that money will be saved every pay day. She hasn’t brought things; she is surrounded by people acquiring things. She needs to save $5000 to get her somewhere so that she can play her guitar, inherited from her father, jigsaw her poems into melodies and begin her campaign to be the feminine answer to the pied piper. Months, years pass. She craftily avoids perfunctory moods and sequential people so she can harbour her creativity. She practices scales. She tries to finger her heart into a sponge. She jumps in and out of obsessions in order to stuff the chicken of inspiration she is cooking. And it is almost cooked.

She wanders through her city; it is the night for night shopping. She is soaking up in the urban spill. Shops pass and suddenly she is transcending the scene, high above the mall she takes a large breath in; metal bars and cocktail bars are sucked into her mouth, the night sky wavers as though it too will follow, and she vacuums up the city. The inspiration is a succulent meat. She can taste the pavement.

But stop. One shop remains.

Her large eye focuses in on a sparkly thing. She is a bower bird and swoops from high above the city to the glass cabinet keeping the necklace. Everything is throbbing. She is a puppy to its sparkles. She exchanges it for her $5000.

And now, the chicken cooked, she is wearing a sparkling necklace round her neck.