Open Writing

Leonie peered through the trellis wall of the bus shelter, focusing on the white line in the centre of the road until it curved from sight in the distance, unrelieved by the expected bright yellow bus. Above her cold porridge clouds blobbed the sky and the south wind scooped them up, ladling them into larger portions that obscured the pale milky sun.

The road was deserted. No traffic. No pedestrians. Even the birds were silent. Pulling her coat collar higher and hugging her handbag close to her chest beneath folded arms, she uncrossed her legs and staged a sitting-down soft-shoe shuffle, tapping a rhythm for both warmth and sound. Any sound that would break the eerie stillness.

A single car, modern and expensive was caught in slow motion as her eye played camera, panning a wide arc as she turned her head, watching, straining to hear the low drone as it passed by leaving the enshrouding gray undisturbed.

She checked her watch. If only she had hurried herself a little and caught the earlier bus with the rest of the locals. Half a dozen or more women, all smiling, familiar voices calling in greeting and no doubt complaining about the weather. Usually the days were hot. Gloom such as this was rare. Leonie turned her attention back to the broad expanse of tarseal before her. The four lane highway was new. The road works finally completed after twelve months during which the neighbourhood folk had dodged heavy machinery, clambered up stone strewn slopes and often walked an extra ten minutes to find a safe path through the chaotic maze of orange-clad workmen and their oversized Tonka toys.

A year ago the bus stop had been shaded by flowering trees. The indescribable blue of fallen jacaranda flowers had carpeted the wide grass section in the centre of the road and the frilled orange cups of the tulip tree, large enough to hide a feeding lorikeet, brightened any day that dared to be dismal. Best of all had been the cassias. Two trees that until a few months ago grew on the meridian strip in front of the shelter. She used to stand in their shade as she waited for the traffic to pass before crossing to the road. The trees’ thin leaves fluttered in the slightest of breezes and were eclipsed each spring by long skeins of spidery lemon-yellow flowers. With the flowers came the butterflies, their large pale wings mimicking the leaves of the trees.

For several weeks each year the company in the bus shelter had watched, enthralled by the courtship of scores of butterflies. Before their eyes the butterflies had hovered, do-si-doed and parley-voused. Up and down, back and forth the clusters drifting down between the moving traffic, flitting over bonnet and bumper as the occupants craned their necks to watch, winding down windows and reaching out to touch. Smiling and laughing, nodding to the understanding guardians in the bus stop who nodded back, proud of their butterflies and the pleasure they gave.

But the old road had been widened and the golden cassias cut down, the green grass replaced with concrete and slab as gray and as depressing as today’s weather.

Leonie’s gaze flicked up as a movement caught her attention. Above the empty roadway three butterflies glided back and forth, their flight hesitant, as alone, on leaden wings, they searched for their trees. Again and again they traversed the road in fruitless quest. As the bus approached the butterflies linked and with a final flutter, rose into the gray sky and were lost among the ghost gums in the park.

She watched them go, her cheeks wet with tears. They were tears of the heart, still, she chided herself for being foolish and brushed them away before boarding the big yellow bus, bound for the lights, action and noise of the shopping mall.