HEAT Series 3

Julius, was the name of my first love
at summer camp
different rules applied, he & I were allowed
to hold hands
people smiled indulgently, called us ‘the couple’
‘the camp couple’
on my part, guilty as charged

When I was young, I realised my body / was something to be held back or kept / in its place, so I have mastered the art / of observation, how to watch faces for / a frown or grimace: signs of weather.

The farewells are what I remember. How thin and white R. looked beneath his shock of hair when I said goodbye to him for the last time and he nodded to me without lifting his head from the pillow, just briefly closing his eyes. How I didn’t go back to his bed, but simply closed the door behind me. The next day I had to pick up his things from the hospital, including the razor I’d charged for him the day before. The razor was charged, but R. was dead.

The Leech / You’re a sycophant, repugnant. Vile bacchant— /
you suck and glut, fill like a slimy phial. No denial /
of the claret in our veins. Fat phlebotomist, /
yes, you were used to treat ailments—fevers, gout, /
haemorrhoids, headaches, clots, bleeding wounds /
and gums—you thrived, made doctors rich.

8) he followed me on Instagram, I followed him back / just to be kind, and he introduced himself as a physicist / building a time machine and asked if I / was interested to go back to the precolonial Tapanuli / because he had the white man’s guilt, / the Dutch person’s guilt, the coloniser’s guilt, / but also the urge / to verify if my ancestors were really man-eaters, / ‘Aren’t you at least a bit, teeny, tiny, curious?’ / he replied, ending it with a chicken leg emoji

I was sitting on a park bench in winter waiting for my spine to register the chill. The sun was on the side of my face, and I could hear a soccer match. I tried to follow each player without looking at the oval; the players scattered and flickered, and I wanted to be the literature, the story – was sick of merely gusting at the side of it. I figured the first step would be to get cold, to be still, and yet activate a thought. To run my fingers.

It is autumn when László sends his introductory message on the dating app. Seasonal is gripping on to their job while their life falls apart in a foreign country. They are not sure that talking to the world in this state is a good idea, but they don’t know what else to do while they are in free fall. They try to trust that this breaking apart is also a coming together.

Cat’s Pantoum / Cat in curve, perched on the side table / She said, holding out her hand / House cat leans forward, leaps: / A dislocation finds its moment

Australian voices remind Kate of dead people. The people she loved as a child, who loved sun and ciggies. More than life itself, as it turned out. A large cup of syrupy black coffee was on the bench table. Her left hand was bunched in a fist to conceal a dozen or so almonds. She pinched out a couple with the fingers of her right hand and passed them to her mouth, crunched and chewed, and took a drink.

The cat surged down with no preamble, startling Mooks, whose set-up tumbled to the ground. Robertson leant down and snatched up the thing before it could go for the filters, and Mitch watched as a single ginger cat hair descended with cosmic slowness into the open tub of hummus.

opening the staffroom fridge and finding the seven-month-old yoghurt still there. Oh yoghurt, old friend, I wonder what’s going on inside that plastic opaque lid.

It takes him a while to find the words, but this delay doesn’t seem to suggest any discomfort with the message, but rather an uncertainty about the use of language itself. Waiting for him to speak, Nat is intrigued, albeit slightly indifferent, as if what he was about to say – or propose, since it’s obviously a proposal – didn’t concern her.

Today I watered the front garden by hand. Maybe not the most efficient method but efficiency has its limits. I decided to pick three long stalks of feverfew daisies growing near the nectarine tree as they had started to lie down. They have an intense and complex scent half-mint half-chrysanthemum. It is an insect-repelling herb.

She said to him, When a woman informs you that she’s a little drunk / this is actually a warning that she’s liable to collapse at any moment. / And when she tells you of a lost happiness / she means that you’re responsible for giving it back to her / on a silver platter, like those knights in the stories of Caliphs / who return home with the heads of enemies on their spears.

On that day in Canberra we had been together thirteen months. Steady, happy months. We owned Ikea furniture together, had combined our books, were joint owners of a Turkish kilim, a record player, and a vibrator. Maybe we would start gardening. Maybe we would get a dog. Maybe we would have a baby, a girl, with curly, black hair.

I’m chasing after something faster than me, that refuses to be pinned down. I find myself getting lost in its contradictions and capaciousness. How to write about something that is made for no one, but imagines, or hopes for, an audience anyway?