Dumb to wonder
if you miss
making out after work
and calling me
baby
while your hoodie’s still
flung across my
living room floor.
Chips for dinner and
vape for dessert —
wrapped up here
amongst the trees
someplace
above reality has never
felt so far away.
In the movies
they call it
suspension of
disbelief, but
back here on earth
we just call it
passing time.
You know what I’m talking about when I’m talking about this:
being a girl on holiday and wasting time with you.
Going far away and forgetting who we told everyone we were.
Being foreign. Feeling foreign. Weird platters for lunch.
Breakfast in the afternoon. Tan lines over our shoulders like
we’ve featured in a surf film. Hot strangers in bars. Photos
of trees in the sky. Pairing it all with a simple singlet and a
sarong, nothing more, nothing less. Heeled jandals? Not no.
Random bites. Coming back to life. Our togs lined up along
the railing. You make me want to throw my phone into the
sea, lie back with a drink and go all happy again. When I’m
not infinitely worried about losing it all, I’m infinitely in awe
that we get to have this.
Sunday, 5pm
when all the bad thoughts usually
start flooding in.
Instead I’m here, lying here
next to you. Skin touching.
Blue waves doing their crashing thing.
Your eyes fall shut in the sun,
and while you’re not looking,
I think, whatever happens
from here, whatever WhatsApp
graveyard you might end up in,
I have to remember this —
I have to keep my heart beating
thing in-check from racing
too far away from me.
The more of these moments I have,
the more of this I know:
We take chances. It hurts to try.
It hurts worse if we don’t.
God I get so sick of living in a woman's body sometimes.
It makes me want to open a sports bar and feel nothing.
It makes me want to shoplift Lynx Africa and cause a price hike.
It makes me want to avenge the person who writes inspirational quotes on
the backs of sanitary pads.
It makes me want to… want. But
the planet’s burning and tomorrow’s never felt so unknowable, and yet —
here you are:
on my lock screen, in my front seat, my contact in an emergency. We come together, and it’s the most romantic thing — it makes the roofs of our lives
lift off like helium.
It makes me want to hire a steel drum band to perform for you on Valentine’s Day.
It makes me want to set up a gift registry.
It makes me want to write poems in books so we can last forever.
But mostly, I just want to call in sick and lie on your bedroom floor, eating ice cream from a cup with our phones on silent, laughing in all these small moments that change us.
Life is not easy, and they do tell you this, but it would be so intolerable without you.
You make me want to swing my feet into an ergonomic shoe and push the accelerator right in.
You make me want to keep trying.
I love living (mostly), and I love love.
But I’ll never know anything quite like this.
What else is there to do but
lie down in this soft sun and
accept,
for once,
some good things
can come so easy.
Red hot running down aisles trying
to get in on time —I always thought if
I ended up here, I’d have ended up with
you, sipping overpriced filter coffee
on the linoleum floor of another airport
chasing down who we wished we could be.
But despite everything — what is it
politicians say? And yet, here we are.
The seats nearby are filled with talks of
Lake Como and Puglia and
all the places we should all be going,
and it’s so impossible that after all this
time it still makes me think of you, who
I dislike immensely but love very much.
Everything good in this life worth missing,
and I’m glad that we happened, and
I’m happy that it’s over, and I don’t
want to hear from you ever again.
The intercom announces. The couple beside
me nudge forward to board. Nothing will ever
come of any of this, but it’s OK because
there’ll always be some girl missing
you from LAX, wondering where you’ve
got to, wondering how you are.
Others have done this before, but not us.
come over quick,
tell me all your lies.
close the gap on
everything we wished
for and everything we
regret, and all those
other stories we’ve been
telling ourselves in party
bathrooms all these years.
touch my skin, tell me
where you’ve been, empty
my car from gas driving
west til the road runs
out, kneel down in the
sand and tell me what’s
kept you alive, so close
to me after all this time.
the tide, the sky,
the night, the thick,
all of it:
you make me feel
like a movie.
This is the reward for the life you choose and the one you’ve made.
Lamb on the table. Stories you’ve been saving.
The pink light. The candles in their sticks. Tulips peeling open.
The deep dish. Everything that’s changed. The sky, out there somewhere, doing its changing thing. After everything
we return here to pull back together:
Drunk and soft and dizzy — I want this feeling to last forever.
you made me feel like
the first celebrity voted off the island
the official cash rate
a mattress on a berm
celiac disease in subway
the supermarket on a sunday
a quick dry towel
briscoes without a sale
wind and no jacket
shampoo and no hair
oooh yes change is as good
as a holiday, says
the boomer in front of me
on the way into the aeroplane.
it makes me want to stand
on a cliff face so i can yell
into the abyss
look me in the eyes
before you ruin my life.
You in my car. Your hand on my leg. Turning the corner. Going back down again. Sunday afternoon. The rugby final. BB cream and Maybelline. Everything we wanted and all that other dreaming too difficult to ask about.
Cheap birthdays. Hot nights. Splitting the bill. Losing my mind. Talking to you from Florence that night. Flatmates. Big mistakes. Missing the connection. Chasing the flight. Someone always leaving, someone always left behind.
The washing, the drying. The calls we never made. Your friend’s band on at 11:45. Blue Powerade. Gum rubs in back corner pubs. Footy on TV. Some guy in bracelets. African disco music. Polyester blazers on the coat hook. Block heels. Shin splints. Drunk on a Tuesday. Everyone getting over it.
Moving on. Moving up. Sheryl Sandberg. Snapchat. Why hasn’t he text back. Bedroom floors. Marks on the wall. Friends like bones. Brandy pours. Wet tents. Long weekends. Diving into the deep end.
Not hearing from you. Meeting strangers and mistaking it for fate. Trying to keep up. Losing it behind. Taking it too fast. Getting good. Being bad. Bridesmaiding in vineyards. Wondering where you are. Sundays that’d go on forever if they could.
Meeting the parents. Wondering who you are. Waking up on someone’s floor. Doing it once. Trying all over again. Chips at the train station. Leaving the city. Opening up. Breaking up. Missing things. Going again.
You, turning to me at the end of it all, on the footpath saying, I don’t want to stop — I’m afraid if I do, I’ll miss it all coming at once.
Hot dust. Night.
The soft quiet. The regional sky.
Where is home?
In the movies there are dinners and pools
but sometimes there is distance and time.
(for Sunil)
no man knows me better
than sunil from unichem pharmacy
each month over there in
the back room,
a swing door,
fluorescent lights,
the poster about how to know
if your passport photo is taken right.
time stops for no woman
except here —
all slow and sweet, sunil prepares
the needle for my skin,
filled with things my body needs but
cannot make, saying
take it easy, this might hurt,
while the wrong-angled profile
shots all watch, wanting
to get the hell out of there
to a faraway destination
but having not done everything right.
there are so many
emails and so many things to do
and so much that makes us feel
like we are incorrect.
and here i am, in the nurse’s chair
so small and insignificant
in tears over the tiny pain,
about to buy a coffee i can’t afford,
after telling you this story,
after he draws the needle
out and snaps his gloves shut,
after he turns and says, slow down, just
for a second, if you go too fast,
it’ll hurt more. if you don’t stop,
life will rush through you too quick —
you won’t be able to
fully feel it.
all those nights you lay alone wondering
are the reason you’re here in these.
your rinsed out body
under a sliver of moon,
a nice top, a shower beer,
making it out alive in time
to be here.
this is the joy of time moving,
the reward for trying:
fuzzy orange light, the room
blur, your skin buzzing,
going all honeyed
with every sip.
drinking is bad, but we do it anyway.
working is hard, but we have to.
these are old times changing,
the glass chances they talk about
taking — the swoon and
the sway of that big ship.
feel this. with me, here,
another year,
another wine-d up night
being all cute about it. no emails
or appointments. no exes
or attachments.
just these, just us. just this.