beside the glass Coolamon, inside a sheepish cabinet

By Joseph Gleeson
Creative Commons/butupa

Today is a big day for people of the _________ Community Centre,
but also, yes, it’s also a slightly funny, odd one too, because probably,
you could be probably thinking, after us, who’s next; but now, well
now, it’s not the time to think of that, and not as more people begin
to arrive, and when there are more faces and more voices, a giant
television screen, which people are starting to collect around.
For the moment, for people of the _________ Community Centre,
their unplanned and tense reunion can continue undisturbed: large
groups have not yet disbanded, and people have yet to shrink into
smaller, into their original and finite family units.
But today is
also sometime like fifteen or eighteen years ahead; it’s somewhere
around 2035 or 2038 and the last time this happened, in 2007, it was
decided that a glass Coolamon would be given to the Prime Minister
and the Leader of the Opposition as a gesture; but this time, marking
this instance, it is the leader of the Refugee Council who is to formally speak.
For the moment, for people of the _________ Community Centre,
they are listening and listen to the Prime Minister: “… and to … and
for … and on the … ersary of …” the preface before the apology could
feel like a band of pavers going into a dense path.


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