Fifty soon. Strange how that number feels both heavier and lighter than expected.
I wake before the house stirs. Kettle on. Dogs at my heel— the old one careful on the tiles, the young one waiting for the day like it might break open just for her.
A magpie sings on the powerline, low and fluted— not calling, not warning— just there. Like me.
The track behind is long, marked with all the right things: mud, fire, boys with scraped knees and full bellies, a wife who still sees me when I go quiet.
The years haven’t made me wise, but they’ve made me slower to speak, and better at listening— especially to my sons, who keep handing me pieces of myself I didn’t know I’d dropped.
There is more life to come. I can feel it humming in the floorboards. Not louder— just steadier.
And if this is the halfway mark, it’s a fine place to pause. To stand with the sun not at my back or in my eyes, but warming my chest.
The magpie sings again. Not a beginning, not an ending— just the middle of a good song I still get to hear.
we were sixteen, all collarbones and restless hands, kicking gravel behind the bike sheds like we knew the world owed us something and we weren’t afraid to ask for it.
your name lived in my throat for years after like a word I never learned to say out loud.
we never got a proper ending— just a Tuesday and a late note and a sudden silence.
I still remember the smell of your school shirt— faint perfume, pencil shavings, a crushed eucalyptus leaf you kept in your pocket for luck. (you said your Nonna told you it kept snakes away. I said I didn’t believe in that. I lied.)
I’ve loved since. proper loves. wild, bruising, grown-up ones. but none that remembered the way I drew hearts in the margins of science notes and spelled your name wrong just to be careful.
you were the ache before I had words for aching. the door left slightly ajar in every room I ever left.
I saw someone who looked like you last week— older, tired, still a little wild in the jaw. my chest folded in on itself like a paper crane.
I didn’t stop. I didn’t speak. some memories aren’t meant to be put back into real time.
but still— on certain dusks, when the light’s low and the wind comes in smelling like warm bitumen and chalk— I think of you.
I’m not an ice-block or wasted teardrop,
mooching around your Long Island Iced Tea.
I’m not chasing dreams, dreaming of Jeannie,
won’t slow for one more whistle stop.
I’ve never bridged sighs, I don’t island hop,
or tasted the free airs of Heaney.
Nor held a heart that, like some Houdini,
didn’t vanish with barbaric yawp.
I have set no flame within love’s hearth
to burn that shantytown down.
At night I am king, come morning uncrowned.
I walk in as Luke, march out as Darth.
Rivers are rivers, regardless of flow–
O, stone, be not so; O, stone, be not so.
Sometime past lunch
when the housework is done
a translucent lady
sheds her husk. In her mirror
the tricksy sun cajoles
grey to gold, teases
with wistful strokes.
Like a vodka-chased pill
she slides down a rabbit hole
until soft fingers feel
almost like strangers.
With a methodical parting
and functional probing,
she dies another small death.
Remember school days and how we would play
like there was no tomorrow?
Now the castles we made
are the price we must pay
or flounder in oceans of sorrow.
Roaming wild and free, building houses in trees
as worlds waltzed to discordant tunes–
like a zephyr through grass,
gilded summer days passed,
left us flayed under Cheshire moons.
Wooden sword fights and valiant knights,
pirates, the Pan and his Bell,
faded from dreams,
rowed ungentle streams,
to where the real monsters dwell.
I’ve climbed faraway trees, seen fair Honah-Lee,
never never thought I’d grow old.
Now the pied piper calls —
as the last curtain falls,
leafless, I’ll trip into the wold.
days of stone 