sarah lawrence
weak nights
‘Actually, it’s a Saturday,’ you said, but checked again,
Brushing lint from the wine cork. We’ll stuff the bottle with
Candlewax & melt it with dinner parties; we are reusing, reducing,
Dragging up dregs of ourselves & watering them down.
Everything is a small word. I
Found bits of it pinging up the vacuum cleaner yesterday,
Got mad without wanting to, like who the fuck keeps leaving that shit out as if we
Have space for it, why do we own so many basil plants, as if I don’t know what day it is, as
If I don’t know all your middle names,
Jesus. We’ll grow violent cooped up like this, like those
Killer whales in the documentary, with legs grazing under the table. Wiser me would tell you
Life is a collection of gaps between showers –
Maps, ridgelines, longitudinal distances – &
Nothing is there, too. But only if you’re listening. When we inevitably run out of cash, then
Outback Australia will be warmer than here. Heating’s expensive. So is trying. We save for a
Party to spend it kissing someone in a corner
Quietly, thinking this would be so much easier if we were on the internet, when
Really, if I behaved how I do on the internet, I would be sociopathic; I would say,
‘Same’, when I see you on fire, and leave the room. Silent
Television dinners will, sadly, have to do for now. I have spent too many days
Underwater & too many nights stuck between
Versions of my own face, until I see yours, like a lifeboat when the
Walls are swimming, ask for
Examples & I’ll pretend I’m not an alien, pretend I didn’t come here because of you,
You & parts of you, just like always, us in our final forms, you in laughter when I’m all
Zonked out & dripping down the kitchen sink.
pre-grief
Dressing, in September, is just juggling
the elements. I’m always a bit mad at you.
Sometimes it’s for how much you look like me. Sometimes
it’s for how much you don’t. Hiking, in this city, is just
looking at the same view from different angles, but I like
how the houses have to grow around the forest. They are our good warm squares,
our jenga. An infestation. You kissed me once,
and I had to watch myself through your eyes for weeks. I hated you
for that, even though you had nothing
to do with it. Growing up is a process
of de-imagining. I watch the 3pm bicycle exodus
from the footpath until I turn 13. I’m skating to the mall
with the kind of friend you don’t realise until later
you are probably a bit in love with, and we are going to run away.
I don’t ask her what it is she is running from. She doesn’t ask me.
We steal a whole bagful of Maybelline, Ben & Jerry’s, Lovisa earrings,
because those are the necessities,
then look at each other, choke, and never speak again.
mum’s garden
I was all fingernail then
peeling garden’s skin back
scraping at her insides
with a blue toy shovel and
sucking my green thumb.
I’d be drinking pink milk
watching mum do real gardening
through the muddy window.
She was morning-eyed, barefoot
on garden’s grass,
opening garden’s womb to plant
our first house cat
then our second
then my baby teeth.
*
Once the tooth tree grew
I thought we might sell it
to a zoo
or laboratory
but when people asked about the hard little buds all over
the driveway
mum swept them up and
told me not to say.
Once I found a yellow needle in the garden and mum
turned white
as a tooth and
wouldn’t let me plant it.
*
After she chopped down the tooth tree
(it was because of renovations)
mum started reading self-help books on weekends.
They taught her
many things.
She taught me how
to sharpen my teeth
with her steak knives.
We were learning to be vampires
but ones that sleep
and are dying. She said
‘baby you’ve
got to
suck the blood
out of things’
and so
*
it started with forgetting to mow the lawn
then mum’s garden got out of control.
The neighbours think it’s awful
the school-girl-checkered lilies
needle-shaped snowpeas
bruised peaches with tabby fur.
Worst of all
by the stump of the tooth tree sprouts
the seed of a truth tree.
It’ll suffocate the tulips.
Mum and I just watch it grow.
Sarah Lawrence recently dropped out of law school. Her parents are delighted. You can find her work in Starling, Landfall, A Fine Line and The Spinoff.