We slow down enough to grow a patch of moss on our legs where the shade lives longest. Do not look away. We are growing through the most alarming of days.

We went to the Dead Sea but I didn’t bring my bathers so I couldn’t go in. I had to watch on the shore, I didn’t know then I’d never be back. I was young. I thought rivers and seas and skies lasted forever.

didn’t my mum and dad slave away through gritted teeth on hands and knees in the corner of some cooked plantation so their son could clean offices for $10 an hour — yo sit back — until their hands became a cocoa field of blisters so why you be surprised brother when we can’t take the weight when we can’t

the shuffle hooves click head-to-hide cattle the press of mud shit billiard eyes shunt grunting low beams of steaming semis

on the carpet at the rear of the family car juddering engine our throats to the night sky with mum green in the face from the dash light long roads thrum bodies still heads

i am grieving for this wolf         hole where her heart should be          my cloak dyed red from her blood       regret washes off my hand         who holds her now that the hole          has become a stone      so heavy

‘Fortis ut mors dilectio’ — from the Song of Solomon, as inscribed on a necklace my grandfather gave my grandmother on their engagement.

I heard phrases I don’t recall having heard before when pied butcherbirds sang outside my sleep of a morning as indefinite article. Still troubled by the behaviours of a friend when we were catching reflections off a deep sacred lake

No claim in the name ‘Jam Tree Gully’ — rather, a personal and familial association of presence which is neither assertion nor acquiescence. There are jam trees. There is a gully. No names displayed on gates.