Sometimes our tools aren’t enough
You’re a better repairman than you are logician
Just like I’m a better wordsmith than speaker
better planner than do-er
Better believe that’s why we struggle
We’re too alike and too busy blaming ourselves for it
This isn’t enough to make amends
There isn’t enough tlc and duct tape to fix us
Your only solution is submission and I
Can’t do that
Can’t believe you’re right or
Can’t admit I’m wrong…
Thinking about origins is like looking at my reflection every two minutes
Because I can’t remember it
Because I have trouble knowing my own face
when it’s the one thing about me not changing
the one thing about me from you I wanted to keep but –
I wanted to keep home inside your chest
Where your ribs could steel cage around my heart
But we don’t always get to keep our guardians that close
Home used to smell like baby oil
cooking oil
Coconut oil on Sunday
Smelt like Vick’s eucalyptus and fine woven mats
Had cheeks like old weatherboard but still softer than baby skin
Not enough new paint to disguise itself
Home used to be gravel and concrete
Looking like rough workday on weekend
and school uniform sweat
Home had a way of hiding itself in your backbone
Like everyone was carrying ancient pou with them
And it made singing on Sundays and driving windblown on Saturdays
feel like the only real parts of the world
Dad
Sometimes this is the only way I know how to pray
Chest open
Jaw locked
Tears behind my eyes and grief in my throat
There is a fire in my lungs
Dad
There is a place where the hedges threaten to take over the train tracks
This place is not home
but it’s the closest we’ve had
since aeroplane separation turned out to be more than a trial period
At least for me.
I’ve had a little more practice than my friends
and a lot less than you at learning to love a new ground
At learning to call it the place where we put our stakes
Where our tent pegs already have holes
Burning walls to bring us closer ended in emotional scar tissue
I’ve tried to make up for that by hugging you, but your still
Always the one
Holding me up through all the smoke poisoning
We are too alight, and not finished blaming ourselves for it
I’m not sure how to make amends
For once I don’t know how to lose
You were gravel and concrete
Solid. Unstable
She always smelt like Vick’s eucalyptus and fine woven mats on wooden frame.
Holding up weatherboard cheeks and your concrete skin
After losing nanna, I couldn’t feel the home in my skin
Like the space she held in my diaphragm evaporated
Made it harder to breathe
Isaia.
Our names are temples, altars to the gods we were meant
To become
You said mine like a swear word
Dirt in your oesophagus spat into my eardrum
Promising destruction, prophesising disappointment
and it was right.
Knowing I would return that, do you regret?
Blame yourself as I did?
Sometimes the most toxic things cannot be cut out
Cannot be flushed from the system
Sometimes the only treatment is submission and
I’m okay with that.
