I.
I don’t like thinking of Coolangatta because
it won’t ever last
long enough.

It was too good. And it was
true.

II.
The day after I land
the onshore breeze blows Burleigh Heads
out for the day

so we lie on the futon and watch the pink hotel
across the road open up for the morning,
two lopsided palms falling
over each other
in the Queenslandian humidity.

We laze while the ceiling fan spins slow
circles through the room,
stretching out
around us -

I’m imagining if
it’s a movie we’re in and not some short
fragment
of time that would go
as soon as it came.

The sky is overcast so
everyone sleeps a little longer. But we
have been up for hours in our own
citrine light. And because
Coolangatta is where we meet -

still arched in the 70s, the heat waves
moving against
the pastel sun like a memory
you want to keep
forever.

III.
When you meet me at OOL I
can feel you before you see me.
The windows are down.
The sea is warm.
We dive in.

The evening opens out before us.
You give me things.
Things you’ve collected in your travels.
I tell you things.
Things I’ve done in mine.
The experience is entirely unfamiliar.
It feels just like a dream.

Even the way you wait for me, the car
idling, the two surfboards tied down on top
of your twin cab ute,
Californian surf pop playing
while I run into the chemist
to get something
for my dress to wear to the wedding -

it feels just like a dream.

IV.
I fall in love with everyone and no one
at the same time.
All the time.

Everyone is annoying and
everyone is endearing. Like

the coked up 22-year-old on K Road last night.
I like the way you dress, he says, lined up
outside the ATM
while I was walking past.

I have these pants and I want to know
what kind of t-shirt you think would go with them?
he asks, everything about him unable
to be still.

We talk and after ten minutes it’s plain and white
we agree.
And as I go to leave he says,
in another world,
I would run into you again
and we would go out.

In another world, I say,
as I turn and point towards home,
thinking of Coolangatta.

V.
At the end of the summer after the weddings
I can’t think about
Coolangatta anymore. It
hurts too much that it happened
and also that it’s over.

I would like to blame the change in season - the way
the light alters your memory of things,
makes them more sentimental,
softens any hardness around the edges.
But it’s more than that.

VI.
At night I come home from work and think about all the
brides I’ve held flowers for, their strong,
electric loves sleeping next to them and their
new senses
of forever.

And mine
less of a reality and more of a moving
sensation,
but worth its gravity nonetheless -

left with the keys
at the reception of a hotel
run by a woman named Karen.

But you’re leaving so soon, she says,
as the metal hits the desk and we’re almost
out the door.

Flights, I say. We have to catch our flights.
But - she says,
everything had only just begun.