Held in suspense

3 poems written across melbourne, sydney, and new york

Collingwood

In the golden light of the autumn dusk, Brunswick Street was a row of rooms that gleamed like hollow teeth. 

The shopkeepers waited. 

Some were alert, quiet eyes come alive as footsteps cross the open doorway.   

Some were emptied, lips pressed, eyes holding a question.  

One turns her head as someone walks by. Her swan-curve straightens, wrists arch, glance grazes the ground outside the window.  

Behind her, garments hung separated by five centimeters: eggshell, seafoam, dove grey. 

The sun had warmed the hardwood. It echoed beneath her shifting soles. 

Next door, a dewy musk of aged oud and wild root, soft and smoky.  

Perfumes sat in perfect rows, black orbs in glass cylinders, waiting to be touched.   

At their center, a woman, hair in a knot, stood behind the dark walnut counter, hands folded like an apostle.  

~

Watsons Bay

Dotted along the ocean path, there were three others, each a mile apart. Alone, they looked out over the water, chins balanced on hands on the black banister. The sun was high and the ocean hummed below, returning. She had wanted to ask something, but none looked up as she passed. The path was paved; between her footsteps, a butterfly blinked, blue and black like an opening. Like the ink that was pushed into her skin the day before, pluming into an accordion of wings. As she laid on her left, something was said, what was it? Butterflies have caterpillar memories. She saw a butterfly kicking its hind legs, running in sleep. Did a butterfly remember a day at the beach? Did wind and light carousel through their orb-eyes, before their butterfly ghosts floated along the cobalt coast, pulled by old lives? At dinner that night, her cousin’s questions pinned her like dead wings. In place of words she thought of flocks of birds that halo the heads of tourists holding bread. Before everything, her dad had knelt in a piazza, sun-glassed and skinny, circled by grey feathers that patted his shins, swarmed his shadow. Locked in flight, three pairs of wings pushed air into his hands. He opened them, smiling. Her footsteps followed, away from the ocean. Behind her, a rustle of wings, so soft, then nothing.  

~

Long Island City

You can literally ask me anything. 
She looked across the room and smiled.
On the armchair, a picture book and
A box of oolong teas, just opened.

From the window, a view of the river.
Her mother at the table, listening.
The cat on its tower, watching.
She trusts you, she said.

The sun set proud.
We sat, waiting 
for the child to come home.