All is the same:
the webbed corners,
bloated garden beds,
a ceramic heart on the door
tied thrice; kissed by rust.
Dogs that greet with voice before
touch.
A woman’s hurried footsteps.
“Coming! I’m coming!”
Perfume and a powdered face.
Mother. We embrace and I flinch.
Unworthy.
Ushered into rooms that hold dear
a history rich of what spectrum I have
trouble seeing; she’ll dictate its nature later:
the chair where I finished my
first novel;
A window, shattered
as siblings played tip.
Now, what is there;
save for a mug that
never runs out of
liquid and honey, and
trays upon trays of
biscuits and dips?
What is there?
A ragged collection
of awards from school,
photographs of times
that embody happiness;
comics I’d drawn,
games I’d played, and
wishes I’d made that
never came true.
This place has forgotten me,
and I the me of it.
I insult its perfect
constitution by returning;
shrouded, a charade.
Within this visage of
my young-man self
the boy: familiar; fossilised;
empty.
Petrified by life.
Who has known love and
the death of love.
Who used to dream of
life and ambition
and now does not dream at all.
Who feels rhythm in
his chest and can’t
decipher its code
but fears its secrets nonetheless.
And here, in this purgatory,
this house of timeless iron:
a mother, a childhood, a child …
What happened to that child?
Mother sighs when I gift her a
dishevelled smile.
“My beautiful boy.”
She says. And then again.
But I am changed.
Ezra Christensen
Sydney, NSW
