Published in Edition Four (2024) as part of the Tales of an Unforgiving Land column.

There’s an old

church

out the back

of town. Nobody knows

how long it’s been?

since the last one left.

The Pray-ers, I mean.

Bits of them

stayed scattered

around like a graveyard,

chewed up and spat

back out at least

that’s what

they think the bluestone

won’t go without a struggle.

My grandfather says

it’s still hungry.

The air tastes

bitter with dry like

a mouth full of cotton balls,

at points of weakness

dry veins

crack crying

hoping for verdure

I’m left

with birch bleached and stale

white fingers to hang

my washing from.

Weatherboards grate tin into stubble

the wind finds time’s

bullet holes to

shoot dust

off the kitchen floor

gaps enough to

see the ribs of cobbled bone,

starving and beaten blue

Black.

Sometimes I whisper

the only prayer

I still remember

a fragment after all

the times

I copied it

out,

hot white pokers boring through

a neck scorched black.

On empty Sundays

Dad’s sister whispers

like scattered sands cutting

underfoot,

I liked it better before

they left.

We don’t

let her in anymore.