As seen in Issue 3 of Bide Magazine  

Blue  


Five years and you say Daisy, baby, Daisy.  Five years and we drive up through the paper barks, the wattle, golden, to touch the softest parts of one another by the reservoir, Sugarloaf. Five years and your plum-coloured ‘98 Toyota feels like my own. We listen to Lyle, to Lykke, to Townes—driving Ridge Road: young enough to feel like we have something no one else has, old enough to know it’s somehow dumb. Five years and we hold onto each other like we’re holding onto ourselves.  I love you, you say, the veins of your long pale hands bulging, a milky blue.

Six years and you say Daisy, baby, Daisy. But it’s an accident and we’re in some sister’s home, long after you’ve left my own. Six years and you’re still telling me, No, don’t worry, I was too drunk to come. Six years and you look at the crab-coloured wall behind my head, saying, But remember, baby, Daisy, baby, I was lonely and she reminded me of you. Six years and we meet for faux chicken, faux friends—you in the blue linen shirt I once sewed and pressed, your hair much longer than my own. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat, I say, looking at those five-year eyes, the colour of Araucana eggs. Six years and you say, well baby, I’d hate to know where that mouth has been.