Published in Overland Issue 248 Spring 2022 · Poetry Poetry | Noble rot Georgia Rose Phillips At night, the outline of the lake changes, the street hunches around the park as fruit bats click past like frenzied metronomes— most nights, I’m in Montmartre; the gully of your navel grazing above me, shadows collapsing, paint unpeeling. Or, the musty barn-house in Altstadt— your shoulder blades cutting through the darkness like a shark fin, hay stacks brighter than sauternes. A global pandemic has happened since you happening. A whole other monument to life, resurrected. They say a new world war is starting, that tomorrow has never been less certain, and normal is forever-gone. Only now can I write that desire melted the snow and stopped the blizzard. Or, that when you finally left, I paced from corner to corner of this sad city, with no end in mind and watched the sun rise into the embarrassment of people fleeing the terror of those who’ve loved them. Georgia Rose Phillips Georgia Rose Phillips is a PhD Candidate and a sessional academic in the Creative Writing program at the University of New South Wales. Her debut novel, The Bearcat, is forthcoming with Picador in 2024, and she is at work on her second novel. In 2018, her creative non-fiction novella, Holocene, was runner-up for the Scribe Nonfiction Literary Prize. In 2021, her short story ‘New Balance’ was a fiction winner in the Ultimo Literary Prize. In 2022, her short story ‘Beyond the Marram Grass’ was a shortlisted finalist in the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies Prize. More by Georgia Rose Phillips › 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 21 June 202426 June 2024 · Poetry Night thoughts Ken Bolton A painting I used to like a lot once & thought about / I haven’t thought about / for some time. It showed / Walter Benjamin at a table in Paris. / The artist’s name I can’t recall. Not Patrick. Not Paul? 31 May 202431 May 2024 · Poetry spontaneous unblocking of angels at drains Claire Gaskin pacific gulls carry tightly closed shells to a height then drop them to the rocks below I say I don’t not mind isolation I am introverted