Listen

I have built the bones of my mother’s house

On the back of hurled words.

I have placed my knuckles in the rafters

And punched at nothing

Except the way we had to fight, like we are fighting now

In that artery of corridors

When answers couldn’t be drawn in the sand, so easily

When the car was an open wound

Waterlogged, and at once stale, that silver line of ocean

Peaking over the hills. 

Our house was full of shapeless valleys, once. 

Because some secrets are best kept 

Under the earth, by crabbed water, foul-and-smelling.

The way that voices love to play tricks

And disappear when you ask them questions

Because they don’t have to make amends

For their thankless absurdity

And they know all about the digs

In your personal armour, the voices do.

Like the waves are really thistles,

The water, a nervous painter,

Too much searching and no one bothering to titiro themselves. 

Because there is a silence that folds

Into the creases of things

But that is not the silence that I hear in the night

Or rather, the silence that I felt 

Underwater. 

Always asking me to see see see 

They used to say that it was the first marks of climate change

Not the disappearance of marine life

But the appearance of too much of it

Two thousand jellyfish

Exploding down the spit like bubble wrap.

All along the edge

Of Great Ocean Road

And the speckled glare of aura

That runs across my eyes.

Because they still take longer than most

To adjust to differences.