Leah Dodd
tether
we’re doing it all together! eating
brown rice porridge, washing
dishes and doing laundry, watching
a poor dead blackbird’s feathers
ruffling gently outside we can see
honeysuckle growing out
of concrete smell its sweet air
see the washing lines twist punctuated
with pegs around each other
baby blows raspberries, shrieks
we fizz and hiss together! we dance
to heart of glass & he watches me
cry, confused, when we listen to Big Thief
we can hear the singing birds
maybe marking death in our yard
we are cutting front teeth, howling
when they burst through pink gum
somehow… together
our fingers trace pictures of piglets,
chicks, kittens I kiss the crown
of his head, he squeals wriggles away
eyes fixed on the cat’s black tail
he’ll cry if I leave little limpet
but oh, I love the closeness it slips
so quickly once we were connected
by a vein and two arteries ever since,
we drift I take these gifts with grace
I am a moonscape of blood and kitchen grit
ultraviolet bone & blotted sleep one day
we will be separate creatures
I will give kitchen scissor haircuts
tether a balloon on a string to a wrist
wrap birthday presents in the witching hour
and became a different animal altogether
ruination
you’ve tried so many times to describe it
the monochrome scans of static xxxxx
the bruises that cloud violet
in the crook of an arm
you wonder where to put all the love
you had gathered, like honey for winter
for someone you would never xxxx
it was new years day & you popped
grapes between your lips on the beach,
felt little fish around your hips
in the ocean only hours before
fireworks, only minutes after that
until your ffffffff xxxxxx xxxxx
you know the weight of an earth heaving
you have howled & convulsed and
felt lightning and thunder at once
at each ticking midnight on a new year’s
cusp your muscles remember what it
was like to xxxxx brain and body so
unconnected the apologetic inevitable
you remember someone that you never xxx
lie back & listen to the city bristling,
listen to the world as it hums and stirs,
somehow xxxx, persisting
Leah Dodd likes getting into heated bidding wars on trademe, but doesn’t often win. She is (very much) a scorpio. In 2021 she will be undertaking an MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University.