izzy

Australia, today you are beautiful
today you are full of promise and holding your bile in
like maybe you could love me, too.

*

sarah

At the end of all things, Charon stood in his ferry and smoked a rollie as he watched the world burn. When the dead came lurching across the horizon, he cupped his hands like a megaphone and bade them all shut the fuck up and line up orderly-like or they weren’t getting on. The ones at the back were starting to sizzle a little, so he sent back a bucket with the waters from the river, which never got any emptier, no matter how often it was sloshed. He collected the money from the ones who’d come with it, slapping a few on the back til they coughed it up into his hands. They stared at him mournfully for an instant or two, until they fell down the staircases inside his eyes to the deep well of nothingness waiting inside. They usually stopped moaning after that. He shunted them onto the ferry like cattle, piled them body-on body to make them all fit. Most hadn’t come with cash. You need a living hand to lay a coin on a tongue, and there weren’t any left to do that gentle job now. The dead lined on forever, rustling a little where their flesh was starting to curl. The fire bellowed from the bridge between worlds. Charon gave it the finger. A toddler flopped out of the queue at his feet, sat drooling on a dolly whose hair had melted to its owner’s lips. He massaged his temples. Across the wispy grey water, Hades was bursting at the seams. Charon wondered about redundancy payouts. The air smelled of piss. The boat groaned louder than the corpses who filled it. Charon stubbed out his cigarette on the heel of his shoe, took up his pole and drove it into the mud of the one river that never makes it back to the sea. Somewhere, the Earth slipped inside its own stomach and winked its way out of the sky.

*

izzy

I want to be everywhere, do everything, be everyone with you.

I want to see the dark side of the moon.

get low and tell me when the dust gets in your eyes.

aim high and hold the light crashing through leaves like a prayer.

roll like you are the biggest wettest wave.

I’ll meet you in the middle.

*

sarah

There are twine-twisted glances between me and my stumblings and the blue-collared nape of your freshly mown neck
Endings eddy and burst like oil in a swimming pool and shatter downwind of your blistering steps
I am bloated with feeling
I am choking on starlight
I am warm to the deepest gold seams of my veins

*

izzy

you put me aside to thaw, thick and raw
resting in a temperature-controlled environment
with all the grace of a frozen chicken breast
or maybe a thigh

I don’t know what it means to say
‘you held me like a lover’

is that delicate and raw and rare
or more like taking a mallet to me?

*

sarah

The plums had just ripened when the wrecking balls came
and I tore into them, juice slipping out of the sides of my teeth
skin staining the top of my tongue before the grit snuck around it
turned the sweet fruit gravelly and bitter
and brown from where the chimney had been

*

izzy

I don’t exist, you don’t exist either
we’re kind of in this weird nebulous place
together

you are so far away, but still
I need you further away
so I can see all of you at once

feel the tyranny of the distance between my brain and yours
the fact these electrons will never touch

beneath the nonexistence is a hope
that breathes loudly
we’re here in the inbetween together
may as well try and enjoy it.

*

sarah

No, she said, and the whole world changed.

*

izzy

fun fact:
I will hold your hand at the end of the world, even if it was more practical to be sheltering myself from oncoming asteroids or fending off zombies or holding onto dry land when the water’s rising

if I am the map, then you’re where ‘X’ marks the spot
if there’s something to get, then you’re what I’ve got

under rays that beat like reverberating bass, you’re my cool breeze
in reverberating bass, you’re the knocks in my knees

if the world was ever a whole and untouched place
it hid itself somewhere in the lines on your face

outside the light, you’re the milky guiding glow
in the milky mad nexus, you’re what I know

fun fact:
I will almost always choose to do the impractical but wonderful thing and I will love things that are broken but beautiful

*

sarah

Legs flapping like fish in a feeding frenzy, spokes whirring, wind gliding off your face smoother than a skincare ad
sun peeping-tom peering up over the treetops ready to bound across the inky sky
being kissed more times than you thought you would be, til your lips go purple and golden and glittery
dogs skittering on polished floorboards, grinning like daisies, tongues sticking out the side
butterflies living their couple of days on a path where you happen to be walking
owls being patted on the head
high fives that just work out
people pushing trains off stuck passengers
babies cackling like old men
rain
your heart exploding over the smell of summer
mushrooms cooked in butter
stars in the country
running just because, in a race against time, winning just for a second, getting a tiny moment ahead of everything

*

izzy

ants running mad zig zags all over my cutting board
narrowly missing the knife

my thighs have gotten bigger
or at least it seems that way

my head hasn’t quite gotten around it yet
I am still trying to cram myself into small things
still trying to squeeze through the gaps

*

sarah

Christmas spirit goes gluggy in the fridge, with the thick carved ham and the custard melting into the pudding. The dog’s eyes are glazed with guilt and sugar from the icing it found round the back of the sofa. Ants scatter ranks over blots of spilled prosecco. The freezer strains against its seals.

*

izzy

if I was a gift, would you open me?
unwrap my spine, prise apart these ribs
tear off all the cladding
pull apart the padding?

*

sarah

On the video, I laugh at the exact same time as you do, but I’m closer to the microphone, so my voice takes over yours, my throaty hoarse ‘ha’ sounds from your lipsticked mouth. Maybe that’s why I think that you’re happier than you’ve been in years.

*

izzy

Marilyn Monroe with a bushman’s beard
Margaret Thatcher with bum fluff

The Mona Lisa with a respectable 5 o’clock shadow
The Venus de Milo with neckbeard

Marie Antionette wizened with a Gandalf the Grey
Kim Kardashian sporting a little goatee

*

sarah

One single stray hair was curled, umbilical, on the splashback tiles behind the bathroom sink as I absently scraped the day’s shit from my tongue and spat it down the plughole. I left the faucet running while my gut sucker-punched itself into submission, and I roared for air, the way kids do when they’re winded for the first time and they don’t think they’ll ever breathe again. I hated my hardest at that string of cells that made up that single dead strand of your beard hair, the same hair that had tickled my nipples on hot summer nights and caught the taste of my cunt on dozy sleep-in mornings, that mess of flattened flakes of keratin that crept past your upper lip and kissed your teeth even when you wouldn’t kiss me. I stared at it, black against the badly grouted tiles, with my stomach cementing and the toothpaste congealing. With the fluoro light flickering and the shower steam condensing. With the knowledge that I’d never clean it off, not until time and heat dried it out and desiccated it and sucked it up the exhaust fan and into the wind.

*

izzy

the ‘clock clock clock’ of your bones follows me around
tied to my ankle with a little brown piece of string

we can sit quiet together for hours on end
in parks, cafes, libraries, laundromats, living rooms,
on buses and trains, in cars and planes

we even went to a house party once,
sat tight in the corner until the music was loud
enough to cover your rhythm on my feet

*

sarah

he thought of his eye grown huge and bulbous in the gunsights
as he squinted down his arm to his triggered fingers
a little sticky from the afternoon’s watermelon, dirt-smeared at the tips
pointed at the shitty incontinent family chihuahua
crouched stupidly in the corner of the verandah, shaking slightly
more out of habit than need
he held his breath and fired three finger-bullets at its little fist of a head
imagined his mother wiping brain-splatter from her Christmas paper hat
and smearing blood across the bad joke bonbons
he was chartering the probable spill of skull splinters when the dog shifted its gaze
from the honey-glazed ham to him, and its little beetle eyes lit up
its ears pricked forward, its tail went to wagging, wagging so hard its butt jiggled
grinning at him with all the love of an old dog for its family, blissful and obedient
he waved away the blue smoke his mind had streamed from his fingertips
and stowed his hands in his pockets, sheepishly
the thick syrup of shame sliding down into his guts as the dog licked his knee

*

izzy

I scraped you off the pavement
or I collected you from underneath a pile of shards
or I held the grit and glass of you

you told me you were unbreakable
or you told me the sky wasn’t a limit, but a challenge
or you knew that if you didn’t break, the world would have to

brittle bones, chalk cheeks, weak knees
the dust and the dirt of you
the salt of the earth of you

if collapsing is a kind of blending into
then you are the most at one with the world you have ever been

I am standing here still, holding my two fingers
up at the sky like a gun
or a peace sign
or a futile flipping ‘fuck you’

you buried the earth in you first
so it wouldn’t have the chance to swallow you

*

sarah

you stepped on the Christmas bauble in your stilettos and it exploded
supernovaed, sprayed pink glossy dust across the polished floorboards
and you swore, as is your wont, harsh and guttural, obscene in the fairy light glow
which set the dog off, warbling his violin-duet howl and hunching his back
some snot-nosed cousin let out a saliva-strewn wail
and the fire alarm, confused into action, added its cat-scream beeping to the din
and as aunties and grandmothers flapped about hissing like geese
it took me a second to notice, in all the motion and noise,
that my heart had bottomed flat out, and was peeking out past the hem of my skirt
staining the silk white of my socks

*