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.
