King for a Day

You won't find this information in that Lonely Planet guide you just shelled out for so I'll give it to you for free: Melbourne is a fairytale locale for gritty urban romance but it's a shithole for a break up. If you've got a busted heart the city's geography can play havoc with your sanity. Turn left and the cold brown river bisects the city like a giant conveyor belt. Turn right and the gridded lanes and cobblestones slice the greyness into terrifyingly small parts.
Mine was a bad break-up and the only thing that seemed to help my black mood was the brisk walk to Collingwood farm, a dung-filled city oasis where I could glimpse cows and chickens and goats roaming happily inside their muddy pens. Animals like these are perfect for troubled times, they are patient listeners and won't say 'I told you so' or 'I think you're drinking too much'.
It took months of bad television and not sleeping before I was able to smile again at Melbourne's small, ordinary things. Tram lines glinting like cake skewers, hot air balloons forging across the dawn sky, hipsters guzzling shiraz while they watched their street art dry.
Before I knew it summer had crept over the city and one afternoon when I was dozing on the couch he knocked on my door. He looked more handsome than before: sleek and tanned from his morning swims, his hair cut regulation short for his new career.
'You look different.'
'So do you.'
His cadet training had finished and he was heading west to fly tiny planes for a big company. He'd bought me a ceramic bowl as a present, the same thing he'd given me every Christmas since we'd been together. This year the bowl was yellow and fragile and I remember thinking how perfectly it suited the occasion.
'I'm not coming back so we should catch up properly.'
I ignored the thump in my chest and said yes, we should.
'Keep next weekend free,' he said and with a rough kiss it was like the grey months had vanished like a fog. Next weekend? Of course I'm free. Those barnyard animals can find someone else to entertain them for a few days.
On a windy afternoon he picked me up and drove me to the airport. He wouldn't tell me where we were going, just that we'd be flying on a small aircraft.
'How small?' I asked nervously.
'Just you and me. Romantic, yeah?'
I shrugged and said nothing because two things I hated most in the world had suddenly collided: surprises and planes the size of mosquitoes.
The flight was beautiful though, how could it be anything else? The stretch of water over Bass Strait was flat and blue and the sky seemed limitless in its reach. Sitting in the cockpit made me forget every poisonous thought.
We didn't talk much, I was happy just to listen as he muttered at the instrument panel or made the occasional call sign to other planes in the vicinity.
An hour later when we landed on an empty King Island airstrip he switched the engine off and sat quietly for a few moments before telling me that he was in love with someone else.
'That doesn't make any fucking sense! You fly me across a small ocean to tell me that?'
'I wasn't sure until now,' he said.
I gritted my teeth because it was another ugly surprise, one that I could barely acknowledge until I'd climbed out of the cockpit and punched the wing with my fist.
There was nothing else to say.
Another plane was coming in to land and we walked across the tarmac together like small boys, one of us kicking at stones on the ground while the other stared vacantly at some cows in the green distance.