What We Miss when Our Backs are Turned

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1. A playground of only thin steel poles, like limbs reaching upward towards you. The quarry, the kiln, the harbour. A cluster, a rafter, a stack, a pile of stones on a dead end street. Yard, oval, pitch, an athletic surface, or a leisure centre. Indent, underbelly, hollow, cavern, coffin. Constellation, mind-map, to draw a line between each of your sources, to trace a river from origin to estuary. A water well. A metal bucket tied to a rope. The distribution of weight over a post. The optical frame, the picture that sits inside. An olive tree was left in our front garden, signifying prosperity. Your dad tells me an endless drought is coming. Dirt, cavern, earth, hole, a rain cloud that disperses evenly. Excavate slowly, then all at once. You told me there were two people in identical motion. The suburb, the street, a manicured lawn. Plant, propagate, a handful of seeds, a colony of ants.

2. I didn’t step on a single crack on my walk home yesterday. I paced myself slowly, letting people pass me, so as to not position my feet incorrectly. It was cold and I began to walk faster. I am reminded of the nature of a walk like this, where the intent is simple and the destination is close. It mimics the pace that one writes. Everything can be seen as a delicate structure, a balanced pile of timber posts. A walk along the highway could be a shining metal tower. A walk around the block, is a wooden box with four sides. The commute to an office, a plank between two brick walls. The walk to your house, a concrete stairway with no first floor landing. Once home, I set my belongings on the table. I find your body, warm and open on the soft leather couch. Our stomachs press against one another, firmly. What I could only image as white hot pleasure, sits just out of my reach. I go to touch it, but wonder whether it would want to touch me. Or would it think, as in reverse, that I was just as unrecognisable.

3. The invincible summer, the wall of heat, plump and robust. A curtain dividing a space. The water source that runs through the urban centre. The heatwave that splits a day in two pieces; the heavy sunlit morning and the long summer night. The fabric moves in the wind, soft, sweaty canvas. Walk from one side to the other, the parallel interior is someone else’s home now. To my knowledge she is a great waitress that works at the restaurant below the apartment. She smiles quickly when you pass her. It is in the closing hours she moves quickly, she solves sudokus in her head as she works. She cleans the ceiling and the bathroom light, a line of tiny flys. After work she will drink soda on the stairs and count her tips. She feels held by the restaurant, surrounded by people moving, passing through for a moment, everything is at once real, plain, but somehow temporary. Outside her window lies a space where a building used to be. She will curl her body between the two brick walls and fall into a restless sleep. Her dreams will be filled with heat warped information, a splitting headache. A network outage. A flightpath. The main road, the laneway, the backstreet. A city that is anxious, naked and proud, all at once. ASMR will play through wired headphones.

4. Every time I leave the city I am back in an ancient world of my own. A world where large moss covered rocks breathe deeply in the valley. Wet lungs, long hours, heavy rain clouds. Here, cleanliness can be nearly impossible, and it is at once the never ending wet season and the invincible summer. An endless cloud coming in off an ever warming ocean. The warm ocean, like a warning, the endless cloud, a promise. Every time I leave the city I bring with me its hollow imprint. A shadow of short form content and the black coffee from a twenty four hour diner. Dual monitor hallway, fogged, air conditioned windows, the hum of a construction site, the smog soaked morning that makes way for a long, clear, sweaty evening. A sea of people, a back street, a crushed crowd. Wings, bound by wire. There is a small trail at the bottom of the valley. The mud sticks to the bottom of my feet, but at the end, I am greeted with warm, hot-spring euphoria. A flat stone in my palm, I am reminded of the first time I downloaded a GIF from the internet. Something shiny, that could for a moment, be only mine. I place it back in the water, giving both the stone, and myself, back to something larger.