Can you Hear, Deer?

Her stash was gone,

so she smoked the moon.

Within the body of her breath,

she witnesses an invisible blue.

At the piano she plays

only the black keys

and opens up to something

other than herself.

She listens to the lacuna

between sound, intensities

of space, segmented silences

more musical than any song.

She listens but no longer sings. Her light trembles

with the incremental instruments of insanity.

Put a plant in the bathroom, she said.

It'll clear the air.

If she had windows instead of eyes

she would become water changing

shape, she would drink the colour

of water, replicate the patterns

of liquid light, sway

to the rhythm of porcelain

and scrub away

the kindness in cruelty.

Her lilac-leaking windows

and listless plumage stained

the bottom of the bathtub.

Sirens. Sirens. Sirens.

Can you hear, dear?

Tell her the tiles are not clean.

---

Stevi-Lee Alver is an Australian writer and tattoo artist. She lives in the middle of Brazil with her wife. She loves bush walks and waterfalls but misses the ocean.

'Can You Hear, Deer' was originally published in Southerly Literary Journal, February, 2018.

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