States of Poetry 2016 - New South Wales | 'Potts Point' by Fiona Wright
for Eileen
The light's older
in these sandstone suburbs,
jam-thick.
A clipped-haired man held a dog leash
saying one of us is single,
and even the leaves
had hunched their shoulders
in the gutters.
A waiter, golden-brown as a bread loaf,
squirted water at the pigeons
that sat cock-headed at the tables. My tart
was soft and skinless. Later, your cat
curled fluidly against my legs
and watched the water fizzing on the moorings.
There are crossed oceans
that must spill still
at the edges of your vision,
things we can not understand.
You said perhaps we're both like this because.
Or perhaps because we are like this. Perhaps
it doesn't matter. We stack
your fridge with blueberries and sushi. You roll
up the lid
of your old writing desk,
curved in three places,
like a spine.
Fiona Wright