Published in Overland Issue 213 Summer 2013 · Uncategorized I didn’t know your eyes were blue Mark Mordue It’s possible to forget a lot of things in the fullness of time: My father’s eyes, the pale intensity of distance, how it all began. I’m sleeping badly now. Dirt on a coffin, a credit card, loneliness, Poetry streaming through my head, a disarranged message That never has an end, am I writing it or having seizures? We are all electric. I sense holes in my chest, panic in half hour moments, Sun and shadow, the motion of leaves outlined through a window And cast upon a kitchen floor adding up to something warm. I can’t stop hugging my children and brushing their hair with my fingertips, Saying things that don’t sound right to strangers, As if I have slipped out of myself and away, Leaving a fragmented self like those night poems of incoherence and sorrow And panic and love: death comes in spasms. Missing my father and being a father: I think this must be what tears are like for me. Blue electric tears from the mind’s eye falling over time forever. Mark Mordue Mark Mordue is a writer, journalist and editor working internationally. He is a co-winner of the 2014 Peter Blazey Fellowship, which recognises an outstanding manuscript in the fields of biography, autobiography or life writing. More by Mark Mordue › 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 28 March 202428 March 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. First published in Overland Issue 228 27 March 202427 March 2024 · Cartoons Visas for Palestinians: let them in Sam Wallman Sam Wallman makes the case for a visa scheme for Palestinians fleeing the war on Gaza.