Annie is already reading when I arrive, the book open on her lap, the words upside down, the spine resting against her knees as if the book has decided that this is the correct orientation for today. She turns a page slowly, without fixing anything, without apologising to the text, without appearing to register that the world generally expects books to behave differently.

I stop, I always do.

Annie is a friend of my mother’s. She’s lovely, and reliably ready with a hug. She can still walk the corridors of this nursing home on the Gold Coast, while my mother can’t anymore, and so I stop for Annie in the way you stop for things that are still in motion. It feels like a light kind of care, not the heavy kind… something sweet.

She’s sitting in a circle of chairs that has assembled itself without fuss or instruction, a talking shape more than a seating plan, the sort of arrangement that doesn’t demand conversation but keeps it available, just in case. When someone sits down, the geometry adjusts slightly, then settles again, as though the furniture understands its role is not to contain people, but to hold the possibility of exchange.

I usually say hello to whoever’s in the circle, it feels rude not to I have learned that you don’t cross a circle without acknowledging it. Sometimes I ask what people are reading annnnnd sometimes they tell me, sometimes they just show me a cover, or tap the page they’ve been sitting with. It is as though ‘reading’ has become a location rather than a story, somewhere you can be without needing to progress.

When I ask Annie about her upside down book, she answers generously, but not always about the book. Often she tells me about something else instead, the piano she likes to play, a place she lived, a person she loved, and the book stays inverted on her lap, doing the quiet work it’s been given, which seems to be holding the conversation open while her life moves into the space between us.

People pass through while we talk. Walkers slow, then re-accelerate and wheelchairs pivot carefully. Staff move with that particular clarity that comes from knowing exactly how long everything takes. Someone pauses nearby, listens for a moment without joining, then keeps going.

It takes a while to notice that this is not a destination, but a crossing point.

Behind us is the television room, producing laughter no one here has actively selected. Ahead is the dining room, where cutlery is already clicking and lunch is egging on the clock. The circle sits between appetite and distraction, and no one seems in a hurry to resolve the tension.

Only then do the shelves begin to announce themselves to me. They run wall to wall and floor to shoulder, crowded with books that appear to have arrived from former houses, former shelves, former versions of people. Crime leans into cookbooks, gardening presses up against grief and theology sits beside Dan Brown (of course). The collection feels less curated than accumulated, as if the books have gathered here not because they were chosen, but because no one objected strongly enough to send them away.

Nothing here insists on being finished.

Between the noise behind us and the hunger ahead, a book waits open on a wooden stand, its pages held apart by two black arms. A green car is taken apart across the page, engine, brakes, suspension, and a diagram doing its best to be useful without demanding attention. The book seems unconcerned with whether anyone completes it, it’s content to act as a place holder for stopping. < Hey! Look at me! > People pause at the stand in passing, reading a paragraph while standing, nodding once, at the page, or perhaps at themselves, then moving on.

Somewhere behind us, a puzzle piece clicks into place, or perhaps it doesn’t, and either outcome feels acceptable. At the long table beside the shelves, two puzzles are underway at once, a panda and an elephant, both mid-becoming, their pieces scattered (but not swept away). No one has insisted on finishing one before starting another. I sense that hands arrive and hands leave and progress is optional.

My mother, Queenie, used to spend a lot of time in this room. She liked that you could sit with a book without being asked what you were getting out of it. She liked the circle, and the way reading could turn into talking, and talking could turn into company without anyone needing to decide which came first.

Now, on days when she can’t make it here, I come anyway. I sit in the circle, I stop for Annie and I take care of the walkers. It’s a light duty version of care, but it counts.

The book on the stand remains open and lunch continues to approach, the chairs welcome sitters and the puzzles wait. Nothing performs while nothing concludes.

This room isn’t asking for memory, it feels like it’s offering permission, to stop briefly between noise and appetite, to read upside down and still be listened to, to arrive carrying fragments and leave feeling less alone.

Thanks, for drifting with me. Lyss x

Note > This season and episode were produced from within the Queensland Writers Centre at the Queensland State Library, as part of the Fishbowl Writers Residency. My sincere gratitude.

Where do you find a place where nothing has to be finished?

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