Published in Overland Issue 205 Summer 2011 · Uncategorized the supplement Ruby Todd desire creates the hollow in which the bird can roost to what is not I add you a song yet looking for its truth what is absent from the present will demarcate the light to add you as travelling in the desert oceans fill the night horizon of the eye a compass wider than the day for what is not you? behold before a body dies how it longs to stay you are my favourite fact I recall you like a sum add you to what is not between my thoughts the secret pact to this bare hour add one I add you losing this day to dark gods my mind drunk on a dream I feel the equation beckon the bird begins to nod Ruby Todd is undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at Deakin University. © Ruby Todd Overland 205-summer 2011, p. 79 Like this piece? Subscribe! Ruby Todd More by Ruby Todd › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 2 29 May 202629 May 2026 · Politics Zionism in real-time: insights from the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Nick Riemer While the Royal Commission sits, Israel continues to murder and starve Gazans as they try somehow to survive. Since the genocide is, indisputably, the necessary overarching context for a discussion of antisemitism in Australia at the present moment, it is perverse that the Commission has refused to hear from the Palestine solidarity movement. 27 May 2026 · Reviews Losing our sense of struggle: Fiona Wright’s Kill Your Boomers May Ngo The precarity described in Kill Your Boomers feels mitigated — more existential than material. It’s the precarity of being lost in your life, rather than the threat of having to sleep out on the streets.
