the trains went by to Upfield and back

the mirror rattled on the wall when they passed

and my face in the mirror trembled

I went in and out as much as I liked

I used the back gate and down the sideway

I didn’t go through the house

when I heard Beau crying in the night I put my ear against the window of the sleepout I heard Lenny singing to him from across the yard

/

all the houses were grey and all the people in the houses were grey

the whole world was like an old photograph that had been left in the sun

the edges of the world were curled up and brittle

I stopped wearing shoes

I thought if I wore shoes I’d tear a hole in the world and fall through

I don’t know where I thought I’d end up

but I stepped as light as bird

I kept to the lanes

I knew all the lanes between Collingwood and Brunswick

some were like gardens and some like sewers

I’d hear kids playing in their backyards and dogs barking

and different languages and music playing

I’d smell hot dinners cooking and grass just mowed

I’d go along close to the fences and feel all the life on the other side

I’d go very early in the morning or late at night

when the whole world was like a river that had stopped running

and there was just me

moving as quiet as a bird

/

I got so lonely that I wasn’t lonely anymore

that’s what happens to people

when that happens they’re gone

nothing in the world can bring them back

/

I think I was a child again

I let my hair go wild and spat in the street

my feet were scuffed and hard

and there were scabs on my knees where I’d fallen over outside the Railway Hotel

I played peekaboo with Beau and whispered his secret name

I stood outside the Cornish Arms and sang songs for drinks

and in the Moreland Hotel I could collect the empties

as long as I didn’t bother anyone

and they’d give me a couple of bottles to bring home to the sleepout

clink clink up the sideway

Lenny’s sister’s eyes like two wormholes

looking out at me through the flowered curtains

/

I remember Lenny watching me from the kitchen window

his eyes pouring love all over me through the white blossom in the backyard floating down like snow

/

it was never about love

I loved Lenny and Lenny loved me

and we loved the baby

/

but something went black inside me

something burned and cracked like a bone left in the fire

something that seemed to weigh as much as the world

and all the love in the world couldn’t shift it

nothing could fix it

I went to Mama and I told her about it