No Take-Backs

Emily is the kind of girl constantly caught between an existential crisis about true love and writing a haiku on sexual innuendos. She also has trouble prioritising her time. This poem is kind of about that and also not really.

The tips of her feet,
disappear into the bed, somehow folding themselves into the unknown,
where touch and smell, taste and sight all converge, a single being,
like the slow merging of sunset light, colours caught and held together.
I wonder if she will stay between the blankets and the sheets,
a part of her forever in their dirty white hue,
in six years I’ll fold them into a box for the charity shop,
and give away my last relic of her.

The trees are obscenely green,
flashing a coded SOS, in glimpses of fluorescent,
I step outside hesitant at the world, but it holds me, somehow today is warm and reassuringly familiar,
reminiscent of my mother’s old perfume,
or my first boyfriend’s musk.
I think about love, and time,
and remember I didn’t brush my teeth.

She left her scent on my pillow, intimate,
I falter between washing it or leaving it, either option seems grotesque.
So I sleep elsewhere for a few nights, letting her trace linger and leave.
And for this reason,
I don’t call her back.

We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Woroni, Woroni Radio and Woroni TV are created, edited, published, printed and distributed. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and emerging. We acknowledge that the name Woroni was taken from the Wadi Wadi Nation without permission, and we are striving to do better for future reconciliation.