I dreamed of you last night; we met in a cafe
with artistic waitresses and noticeboards
of flyers for community fundraisers and organic wholefoods.

You met me on the street and there
you kissed me,
cleanshaven and cool as morning

you traced the arch and then the bow
before separating me with your tongue.
It lasted longer than it should have,

our affections have concluded and we are
friendly at a distance, we remember birthdays
with emails and sometimes short messages,

so there is no justification for a mouth with sweet breath,
the heady, hormonal intake and the yielding exhale,
I turned my face to you, you held my waist so lightly,

then it ended, and we ordered coffee.

for this we give thanks

For an evening alone. The sun rising early upon a journey on one hand and a return on the other. Michael seems much less disturbed, less aggressively misunderstood/misunderstanding. We sit in the place which is the same place I have often sat with you and you and her and him. The walls are warm and my seat is comfortable.

The workaday passes quickly and I'd have more in me if only there were hours on the clock.

Instead Randall and I pass TJ and coffee and Notorious E.V.E. and find a lost warehouse to ode to those gentle women's parts. A storm comes and it is a storm. Sally and I meet the movie and some two-bit fame but afterward a trip of a lifetime, a time of a life trip and some jangling beat sets me thinking that this is a Twilight kind of a light.

When morning comes, I'm up like a bird and ready to move on. And move we must. But the time the town hits, it's hot and I'm feeling strangled and distended by the men I hope I never marry in the row in front of me. But we go to market to market and buy a big pig (so hot, it will make you cry). And before you know it is time and the city and Ms S in the City and we have R Bar, which is not Our Bar, just Your Bar, or partly Your Bar and mainly ours for a night of wine, women and wrong.

Eventually another day dawns and it is all bustle and wind and water. The ruins leak down gold-grey tears against the food which is ripe and opening, against the wine which is all red and raw, the lamb which is all elongated, meaty pleasure. The seasons conspire against us all and while I suspect another story is being told somewhere, we only tell a story of love and loveliness and later we have wine and wonderful and a moment or two of mis-understanding. The evening ends and another day starts in fits and farts. But it will end, like all the others, with three people sharing one brain and trying to make sense of life's senseless logistics.

after the storm

The wedding guests sleep it off and wake up strangely early and disgruntled. Time to start meditating again.

Eventually, however, tweed overcomes. We are "filthy blinkers" but still there is a sparrow sprightly hopping across familiar streets. Our photographer has a small bag of coke and a packet of tampons in her basket but that doesn't seem any weirder than the fact that you and I are dressed like fifties public servants and about to appear in a trash rag. It all just kind of seems normal again.

Like moving the furniture and doing the groceries and heading to a colleague's place for one more round of something that I could be good at but also might not be. We resurrect the lounge room and start the rice. The table is sanded and starting to seem like a table that we won't want to let go of. In fact, everything seems sweet and gentle. Elmah is gentle and quiet and unexpected.

the wedding guests

Are standing in the rain, the water pouring and washing away what was passed and what is present.

So much floats to the surface and so much loses its colour.

One swift transaction takes what beauty and what pleasure remained from a day of gaffes and mishaps.

some mornings

When the cool of the evening is already ceding to the heat of the day, I watch you dream, your eyes remming, strange twitches and sighs signalling the rough and tumble of the mind.

Yesterday morning was all wretched self-loathing and admonition. So I am glad for the respite.

This morning is a simple yawn, noting some stiff in the back but mainly light in the heart.

I snooze the alarm as is my want these days. And wonder if my dopamine levels are too low to be creative anymore.

Then I stop worrying altogether.

Last week both my parents were overseas in equally strange circumstances. Now they're both coming back to town. With deliberate neutrality, I take the news as it comes and hope it won't come like a hurricane.

there's no getting around it

I have a serious case of writer's block.

I blame it on a serious case of sustained happiness, the "completion" of our house painting struggles, the early onset of summer and working only three days a week.

Though my father is stuck in China with dengue, my mother continues to work a gold deal in the Philippines/her head I build another, smaller family with books of poetry, dinner clubs, twelve women streaming down a hill on hot bikes, detox-lite, Toby flirting with me in the library, photographs of the sky, surround sound folk music and performance pieces about breasts.

It's not what I imagined life to be when I grew up, but I've been wrong about most other things, so no sense wondering why happiness is so alien and unfamiliar.

it was winter

When we started painting. Now it's all heat shimmer and fearful collection of buckets of water as the temperature stays over 30 for another day.

We take a shift at the market stalls. Aron heads to psycho-cross, agressive men's single speed moutain racing. I go to a Young Liberals event for my own version of thrill seeking.