mypoeticside
the unfinished kiss
The Unfinished Kiss
The tide rose between us,
not as a wall but a breath—
salt‑heavy, unfinished,
like a sentence cut short.
Your mouth leaned forward,
mine leaned back,
and the air between
became a circle we almost closed.
Above us, constellations
shifted their shoulders,
stars rearranging
into a pattern we never named.
The kiss remains—
not absence, not presence,
but a shadow tide
that returns each night,
closing and unclosing,
closing and unclosing.
.
the way back
Feather drifts in the paddock mist,
catches on a fence where the crow keeps watch,
slips past thistle and shadow‑fox,
rests by the lantern in the council’s glow —
and somewhere beyond the hill,
a glint waits for the hand that knows the way back.
life-arc
Life‑Arc Diptych
I. Townhouse Days — Looking Back
In the upper case,
a volume the colour of
late‑harvest light,
its spine breathing
salt and iron.
I keep it ajar —
not for dust,
but so the mapped water
can run beside
my own small channel,
each bend marked
in a hand I almost know.
Through the plaster,
a swell of brass‑warm air —
someone’s breath
caught in a long note,
turning the parlour
to water.
I did not rise,
only let the sound
find its own shelf
between the maps,
where it could lean
against a memory
I had not yet
admitted was mine.
Between the first assent
and the last,
a pressed leaf holds
streets I never walked;
in the hollow
where a page was long gone,
I’ve set a three‑part hinge:
motion, tether,
threshold.
It waits there,
not as ornament,
but as one more
voice in the palimpsest —
leaning into
the window I still
leave unlatched.
Hinge — Platform Light
Between the last stair
and the first step down,
I carry both airs —
brick‑warm and hay‑sweet —
in the same breath.
The train waits,
engine ticking like a clock
that belongs to neither house,
and I stand in its glow,
already partway gone,
already halfway home.
II. Homestead Nights — Looking Forward
The road out of the city
was a long exhale —
brick giving way to hedgerow,
hedgerow to open field.
By dusk, the air
tasted of cut grass and diesel,
and the porch light
was the only star
that didn’t blink.
In the kitchen,
boots left by the door
like commas in a sentence
I’d been writing all term.
Nights here were wide —
crickets stitching the dark,
the wind combing the wheat,
the barn’s slow breath
settling into the rafters.
Come morning,
the rooster’s call
would fold me back
into the farm’s grammar,
but for now
I lay between two lives —
one lit by streetlamps,
one by the moon on tin —
and felt the tracks
still pulsing
under my skin.
.
platform light
Platform Light
Between the last stair
and the first step down,
I carry both airs —
brick‑warm and hay‑sweet —
in the same breath.
The train waits,
engine ticking like a clock
that belongs to neither house,
and I stand in its glow,
already partway gone,
already halfway home.
.
until the duvet is folded
Until the Duvet is Folded
( after CG Thomas' "As I Lay Dying" )
I rest in the breath of wild thyme,
late warmth carrying a brio of wallabies
slipping between trunk and shadow.
A duvet settles over me,
its seams brushed with wattle dust,
the slow dissolve of aniseed toffee on my tongue,
linen on the line lifting in the afternoon drift.
I linger, hearing bees
trace loose spirals through tea‑tree and grevillea,
the ring of my father’s axe on the woodblock,
my mother’s voice spilling from the kitchen —
flathead spitting in the pan,
condensed milk thickening in its tin.
The ground beneath me eases,
soft as sand after rain.
I watch the sky unroll its pale cloth,
clouds loosening toward the far hills.
I remember a cake bright with sherbet lemons,
tin kangaroos wound and hopping,
friends whose names still bloom in my mouth.
Back then, no thought of what might follow —
only the clear window of youth,
edges now dimmed.
I dream the meadow into its first dawn:
river tumbling over stone,
wallabies hidden in their burrows,
duvet now folded and set aside.
In that last quiet,
I choose love over ambition.
The air keeps it for me.
.