Untitled Series (no. 15)

Before the gunpowder.

Your autumns still smell like olive oil,

Your moon is too full, too bright,

She is billowing and heavy, bringing new crops to life,

After the silver spring.

Your winters smell like burning motor oil,

Too harsh a scape for the young to play, for women to rest, and for men to come home to.

During the gold rush.

Your springs still scrape my kneecaps,

Ten kilometres an hour has never felt this fast, with Disney on my helmet and my bandaids, I kissed the edge,

The edge holding me with training wheels firm, bolts clamped on with no room to budge.

My scabbed palms will still cuddle your Easter lilies, my dirty nails will still hold rubber handlebars, and faulty steering, against my crested cheek.

After the gun powder.

Your skin has come cracked, has faced drought in lazy Octobers, in the first chills of new Novembers.

The smell of fresh gasoline will cling to this night, mixing with sautéed onions and garlic,

Like the omelettes dad used to make us,

With extra olive oil,

red peppers and mushrooms.

The colours of every falling leaf making dishes too good for the Spirit of the Moon to taste,

if she were to leave her heaving tides for tonight, to make haste and come home,

Bounding off the playground of blue and grey, to come busting through the white metal doors in her same old way.