think of home and
paint a picture
like this:
the window down in old ute
a thousand stars and gravel road
bedding in the back and we
brace the cold air for the warmth of the
roadside rivers.

sunlit all dappled
across nose and lip
waiting for that giddy teenage/d feeling
waiting for that

are we absent in our absences?
are we following through or
swept up in idealisms
hiding pestilent hope
I wander

through dark doorways
chiselling away at patience
until she loses her fucking head.

they never visit.

at night I rub
ointment on my elbows
my temples
my feet.

I float
in wind that whirrs
too clunky.
another moon-rise traces the cold flesh
my aching abdomen,

I wait for their whispers
they never come.

faltering across webs of blue
cold breast and
blushed nipple.

diaphanous transience
of the thin hide
of the long dead.

I watch myself age,
bitter about it.