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

I don’t cry anymore when I drive by the creek.

Dried up

alongside my mind

filled with cotton wool clouds

I’ve gotten softer.

I think back to when

summers were colder,

wetter,

more predictable.

Now the kumquat trees can’t

even birth on

time because they’re

stuck

in the waiting room,

understaffed and underloved.

Drier eyes and stonier faces,

a sign of time’s bandage

Mum says but

I think I’ve gone backwards,

somehow.

I’m more like the girl who left

caked creek mud on the flat

of her palm to

watch it crack and dug to

brown skin underneath

red earth

than the last time I came back.

Maybe I’m finally old enough

to time travel.

Tall enough

to see over all

the multi-storey barricades

where I used to stand,

looking into her eyes filled

with lemon seeds,

sticky fingers and

hope for herself.

She had enough faith in the tank to

make it one way but

now I’ve stalled out

half-way

back.

Will she come and meet me?