Maria Takolander
Maria Takolander’s poetry, fiction and essays have been widely published. She is the author of a book of poems, Ghostly Subjects (Salt, 2009), which was shortlisted for a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2010. She is also the winner of the 2010 Australian Book Review Short Story Competition. She is a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at Deakin University in Geelong.
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Night has settled through the house like silt. My bedroom is as dark as my nursery memory of it, as dark as my child brain, which is only beginning to build an image of the world inside my skull cave. The plaster walls are what I remember the most, although I think of them not in terms of paint colour or wall paper but only in terms of their hidden chalkiness and how they persist in the shadows. I remember, too, the framed cavity where the door hangs open to the darkness of the hallway, and the draped space where the window is allowed to exist untroubled by day.
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