The Holiday House

With a slow smile warm as the midsummer breeze

She drifted down into the hollow of his firm embrace

Fitting neatly between his broad shoulders

And those brown, weathered hands clasped around her waist

While the steady thump of his heartbeat coaxed

Her pulse to beat in leisurely time

Eyelids glowing red as she raised her face to the sun

She could still see each tree before her; she had climbed

Them all, as a child. The grime had streaked her pleats

And he had wiped away her tears when she fell

Took her by the hand, as he still does now,

To bounce pennies into the old wishing well.

Each scent, each sound too, was a familiar concoction;

The evening air of May heady with sweet dusk rose

Pierced by a cacophonous chirp of cicadas in the throes

Of spring ecstasy, while the kookaburra crows

From his perch in the thickets of honeyed acacia trees

Heavy with blossom to fall with the pelting summer rain.

And though not new, the glade was gladdened

By children’s gleeful play, their laughter renewed, resounded

Through the boughs which see them grow and fray.

Turning to meet those smiling eyes

She heard him softly whisper, ‘remember

How we had laughed very the same way?'

A brief description of the passage of time

The first detail to dissipate is always the sound. You can see them, the smile, the hair, the fire in the background burning hot and bright in slow motion on the dark sand. You can see the way their mouth moves to speak but no voice emerges. You strain to remember, but each iteration seems to be more distorted. It’s a silent film now, that you play again and again in your head. Even though it’s only been a few weeks, the voice, the sounds are lost. Would you recognise it if you were able to hear it again? Memory is so flawed, so fragile.

Next to go is a sense of time. All the images jumble together in a pile, until the timeline becomes blurred. Did we see the movies first? When did we first meet? It gets all so confused, the various scenes get compacted together and the mind begins to fabricate to fill in the gaps. The sense of loss is greater now, because small things suddenly remind you of the moments that have already been forgotten once. You wonder how much you’ve already lost.

Then the face begins to blur, slowly, expression by expression. Sure, you can remind yourself with photos, but they are static. You start to forget the way their brows furrowed together or the softness in their eyes when you woke up beside them for the first time. The face in your mind becomes static, like the pictures, forever frozen into that shallow smile that doesn’t quite reach their eyes. You start to forget the lines on their cheek, and once again, desperate not to forget, to create that image, the mind begins to fabricate, smoothing out the skin, widening the eyes. Sometimes the person that stares back from you at the picture looks nothing like them in your mind, and you forget what it felt to be on the other side of the lens. But there are details that stay, like their silhouette against the glowing coals in the darkness, profile against the bright lights, the way their skin was downed with light brown hair, golden in the sunlight, the blue-green streaks that ran through their irises, like looking through the remnants of exploding stars.

Soon you’ll forget whole days, and replace them with the thin fabrications that are used to placate the people around you. Stories, myths mix in with the facts until you can’t even tell them apart. Scenes that you’ve imagined for so long will blend with the past reality until you can’t quite put your finger on whether it happened, like those dreams that you can’t quite shake. And then you’ll forget the images, and all you’ll be left is some flat photographs and stories that have been whittled down again and again by countless re-tellings. Every so often, a wave of panic rolls over you and you desperately begin to write everything down. But the words fall short and the pen falls limp on the desperately scrawled pages. You crumple them up and try to remember the days for what they are and not what you imagine them to be. Soon, the days and people become a creature of your own creation more than a memory. 

The last to go is always scent. Every so often, when the soft warm smell of burning pine enfolds you, you are suddenly brought back vividly to that moment. You see clearly every detail, every line on their body, the salty tang of ocean on your lips, the musky smell of smoke in the air, the sound of the waves crashing on the sand, and even the roughness of skin beneath your fingertips. For a brief second, you’ll be there again, transported through time and space and differences to that special sanctuary that will always remain, even if at times inaccessible, in the dusty corners of your mind. It is a smell you’ll never forget, one that could brighten your day or bring you to tears. And that smell will always be attached to that brief encounter even though you have probably smelt it a thousand other inconsequential times before, and serves as a reminder to how every moment, every second we are evolving, and changing and growing. And that means, inevitably, some things will be left behind. 

I know I've been gone
Far away, too often, for so long
That you've forgotten how I sound

I bring you sweets and chocolates
White roses in black boxes
But it won't make up for sleepless nights

Our life together is only snippets
Cut out of film and old photographs
You can't find my face in half of them

I know I don't say it enough
I know that loneliness feels rough
Even though words just don't cut it

I've tried so hard
To keep us together when
Your morning grows dark outside my window

But you've cried, I've cried
Far too often I've lied
When alcohol drowned our senses

Walls we've built between us
Are higher than the seas  are wide
But now I'm coming home

I will see you outside my door
I miss you at every airport
I grow cold when I sleep alone

But now that I'm coming home
At least for a little while
Maybe we can just sit on the sand,
Hold hands and smile
Just talk a little while

The Adventure

Rivers that meander through wide brown valleys
Mountains that loom high in the distances above
Unicorn forests, fairy lights and pixie dust
Bring me new eyes and new dreams to love

We race on a blazing trail towards the sunset
With wind blown hair, like in all the movies
Worn denim, cracked leather and sun baked seats
Tall tan boys with the new American beauties

In the night we sway softly to a warm lull of the sea
Watching our flames climb higher into the purple sky
Crashing, salty waves drown our stiletto fantasies
In the brief moment between hello and goodbye

The stars are false here, in the city half light
The half night billowed with music, tumblers and dance
The smiling faces here, cracked black and white
At a glance, we alone are the one-in-a-million

We are passer-byers, the highway-men
Stealing from others what we have starved for
Warmth and caresses that we are not deserving of
Count on one hand the times we answered when

But there is still sand in the bottom of my shoes
Your voice is trapped a shell on my bookshelf
And like shells scattered by monsoonal tides
We will all be worn smooth on the same sides.

Monstrous Love

You slammed the door on a monster man,

He was frothing at the mouth,

The whites of his eyes had consumed those clear brown irises

The gnashing of his teeth and the rage of his roar

Tore at you through the thin red bricks

He shut out the monster woman,

Those thin, red talons that grapples at his throat

Sunk into his back to leave long red marks

While they make monstrous love, on the big screen

Her screams tearing at him through the sere concrete

My love, it was a monstrous love,

That gnawed at my insides until I awoke hollow and bloodied

And poured hot ecstasy into my veins, broke

Its heavy chains, bounded inside its cages

I draw it to me while it tears at my skin

Your love, it was a beastly love,

That cackled and danced until you awoke sick with horror

And the sleepless night blent into days, broke

Your gentle gaze, yet still those ragged arms ached

To draw the madness back into your ribbed and raw embrace

We cry together, scream together, monstrous lovers

Each more afraid than the other of those red, consuming eyes

We run together, flee together, from the beastly heart

Grasping at each other’s wild, flying hair, lest

The devil should take the hindmost 

Aging

I grow old, I grow old

My bones shall shiver in the cold

With sere flesh draped, corrupt with fever,

The biting frost grows ever bold.

The cherry flush fades from lip and cheek

Defiant eyes grow dim and meek

The lightest touch will send a-tremble,

What the senile mind could put to sleep

Vital blood rushing through vital veins

Cool, thins and stagnantly pools

In spider’s silk under papery skin

Creeping up my withered limbs

At the summit of youth, first

Have I felt the horror of winter’s sway,

Beheld death’s valley spread beneath

While withered trunks line my forward way.

I first dreaded then, that breath of cold

And the thought that I, too, shall grow old,

From the creases that run from my eyes

Etched from the labours I have sold.

Then the luxuriant locks would fade

A slender figure would engorge with time

Feasted upon the ruins of the years,

A violet fast fading, a sweetness fast wasting

This joy a fruit that cloys at the tasting

Washed with the bitterness of aging.

Ghosts in the Water

When our limbs grow frail and our leaden eyes dim,
Hand in hand, we shall step beneath the waves,
Firm feet in the sand, towards the dusky rim,
We will welcome the darkness of the waters' depths.

Our hair drift out like silver seagrasses behind us,
Fanned by the crash of distant waves high above.
We will sing with mermaids in our coral tombs,
Our voices rise as ocean foam,
Hear it echo in whitened bones, cleaned and hollowed
by the sand, the water, the salt and the stones.

Tempests shall not wake us from our deepened slumber.
We see distant crash of ships as driftwood sinking down.
The dead that thrashed and writhed are at peace below the surface,
We close their eyes in the restful sleep of the drowned.

When the sea-crabs that skate along the silence of the ocean floor
Feast upon our lips, we will hear no human voices.
We will own no name, beneath the waves we live as ghosts
In the cold water, we shall drown no more.