Tag: loss
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All the Birds are Gone
The sky doesn’t hum like it used to.We traded songsfor signal towersand forgot the soundof wings over wheat. Benches sit emptyin parks built for someone else’s childhood.Swings move only with the wind now,no laughter to push them. We speak in pingsand half-hearted hearts,thumb-pressed loveand silence that scrolls onlonger than grief. We taught our childrento fear…
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Red Shack Triptych
I. Red Shack, White Silence (His Voice — Then) We climbed past where the trees give up,boots sinking through hush and drift,wind at our backs like a warningwe chose not to hear.The red shack waited—tilted, rust-kissed,half-swallowed by snow. Inside,a match struck light against the cold.One flame,then another,until the dark softenedjust enough to hold us. There…
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Blacktop & Burn Marks
We hit the highwaylike it owed us something—two beers deep,one taillight out,her boots on the dashand my name on her lipslike a dare. Pickup rattledwith the sound of bad wiringand worse music.She tuned the radioby punching it,and it worked. She lit a jointoff the cigarette lighter,passed it without looking.Said,“If we crash,don’t bother calling my mother.”…
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Paw Print
Years since—his bowl gone,yard grown over,collar hangingunused. This morning,cleaning the window,I found it—one print,low in the corner,half lost to light. It floored me.Solid.Sure.The weight of himin a single mark. I stoodcloth in hand,his breathsuddenly in the room. Didn’t wipe it.Didn’t move. Just watchedas the sun warmed the glassand brought himloping backthrough the yardand the years.…
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Red Wagon
I pulled my dog through summers,tongue lolling in the heat,ears twitching at beesand things only he could hear. The wagon rattled like laughterover cracked footpaths,and I—captain of that small red ship—knew no world beyondthe corner storeand the shade beneath our tree. It was enough. Now I carry more—keys, deadlines, debt,the ache of wantingwhat I used…
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Almost Eden
You knew.She knew.It was thick in the air —like rain that never falls. Her hand on the doorframe.Yours in your pocket,clenched around nothing. The storm had passed.But the heat hadn’t broken. She looked at youlike you were the answerto a question she wasn’t supposed to ask. And you looked at herlike a manmeasuring the cost…
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The Weight of Lost Things
Set against the dry pulse of the Australian outback, these poems chart the fractured terrain of boyhood, brutality, young love, and the loyalty of dogs. Fathers vanish, mothers soften, dogs die, and the land never forgives. With language as lean as the paddocks it describes, this book explores what gets buried, what remains unspoken, and…
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you left before the bell
we were sixteen,all collarbones and restless hands,kicking gravel behind the bike shedslike we knew the world owed us somethingand we weren’t afraid to ask for it. your name lived in my throatfor years afterlike a word I never learned to sayout loud. we never got a proper ending—just a Tuesdayand a late noteand a suddensilence.…
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Coal Town
Birds don’t stop in this town. I see them fly past, black peppering blue, going someplace. I’ve given up dreaming wings. This town will know my bones. Condoms sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile of those steel-eyed shrews who linger late after church.…
