Boots from Canada

Boots from Canada

You sleep softly on fire in a city that knows her footsteps from time to time    Your bones slip into each other    Your bones slip into her honey-milk hands that are framed by the brown couch in the lounge room    She looks like home    You sit on the couch and it cradles the shy-love-lust and her brown-cow eyes bore into yours    Several cups of tea and wine entertain your hands until the glasses and mugs are dry    You blink and she's still staring and you're not sure of what to say so you tell her everything except for what you want to    You don't know how to interpret any more than the back of her hands     She's gone now    And before she went you said goodbye    A cold porch under your bedroom-feet and her in boots from Canada    And you wanted to raise your voice to bridge the distance but you realised that she speaks only in whispers    So you're here on this bed that she passed by once    You're here on this bed with bones and a bare mattress in a crowded city that she once drifted through

(image: Emma Jay)

Published in Page Seventeen, November 2010