Walking in the country you remember how to write fiction.
Pineapple pines string dirty boulevards of sunlit infinity.
Choosing motion sickness over poetry, sheep seep through the petulant
Watching you gaze into another woman’s face / I feel I'll always be /
What she gave up on to secure her father’s affection. How to Coincide
with life. If the syntax won’t admit us we will have to break it.
Salt and pepper lies. The singular accoutrement of the country-wide.
I am always on your mind. As evidenced by the way songs used to end
with a meaningless flourish and are now just content to trickle.
 
Handing you the jumper leads inevitably proposes connections –
Like a red phone box in the middle of a paddock, the touch of her fingertips
on your wrist is best forgotten. The way to connect is out of sight just beyond
that hill, or inside the box, beneath the carpet. The grinding loss of a man
with a face like an apple looms over you as you sleep. Old and full of grace
and nodding by the fire. Into this world the hills look smooth from a distance,
the weeds spin silk and stories of genocide. Perhaps I’m not equipped for love,
she thinks, but only for the companionship of unruly affection.