Home

Best Australian Yarn: Four Hands Holding Onto Forever by Bebe Backhouse

Bebe BackhouseBest Australian Yarn
Four Hands Holding Onto Forever
Camera IconFour Hands Holding Onto Forever Credit: The West Australian

I walk through his front door, and I’m immediately greeted by the stale air, clouded in hazes of freshly brewed shame and delicate raindrops of pain. Passing his bedroom, I can smell the remnants of the carnivals that had been happening between its walls. And for a second, I wonder of the men who had come to satisfy his desperate urges that only show themselves when the silence becomes unbearable, and his loneliness wakes up from its daytime sleep.

I think of how they will never know him as more than a face and a body, and they won’t learn his brother’s name, or hear of his grandmother’s rooftop terrace in Elcarmen. They will never know that what they are giving him is more than anonymous physicality. They hand him another reason to turn his back to the world, point his face to the wardrobe across from his bed, and cry.

Empty takeaway containers and the paper bags they came in, hide the kitchen benches from the sight of anyone who might have walked through that door before me. And in between the remnants of the Uber Eats deliveries, I can see dried wedges of lime from the gin and tonics that he made for himself more than a month before. And in the corner of the kitchen, behind the framed photograph of his last family dinner in Bogota are the tall and dried remains of the flowers I bought him for his birthday, three months ago. I would think this to be a sweet thing if it wasn’t for the fact that they are only there because they have been neglected. Like everything else in this house, like him.

Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.

Sign up for our emails