That we miss one another doesn’t go

unsaid but as easily could. I squint

until I can make you out from the glint

on your glasses. Half on your side, you slow

a rush of a day down to the remote

roll of lethargic waves. What it all meant

slides now as you home in on the gentle

and show me so much I already know

about the days ahead. Your voice is low

and soft, neither near nor far off. The screen

is one of your woodland walks as you lean

towards me, as close as distance allows,

and we do what we can. You’re still glowing

long hours on, unextinguished in my mind.

I put my signboard in the back seat

and we tacked through the fleet of trucks

in the parking lot and onto the

hot open road.

Where you goin’?, she’d asked;

lips and beef jerky: I’m Carla!

Her jaw, blade straight, softened in powder,

she looked dry. Her earrings swinging, one-handed.

Her face was smooth and pale, no hair;

her colours borrowed from elsewhere,

she smelled of meat and sweet freesias.

Pleased to meet ya, she said,

her voice crunching under wheels.

You looked like you need a ride and I

need to hide myself from sleep you see.

She drove in bare feet.

Hon, get me a cigarette? She pointed;

I rummaged around and found a penis in a jar.

Oh right, she said, that’s weird, I know,

but that’s the worst I have to show you.

It used to be mine, she said.

It’s in a jar, I said.

I had nowhere else to put it.

*

Silent, we slid northwest.

The sun the colour of a two-bar heater,

switched off and still warm. Taking me back to

distant days huddled in layers

of endless tea and jazz in my fuggy room.

The window’s gap sucked on her cigarette,

licking it clean of ash, blushing the tip.

She smoked like she knew what she was about.

The hairs on her left arm were vermillion,

soon to be lost to the door’s shadow.

What you gonna do, Carla? When we get there.

I recognised her expression -

(I’d once told my Nanna I’d lost a friend to a rival

and her eyes and mouth showed me:

there’s worse to come, get used to it.)

*

Carla treated her hair like a sleepy toddler

slung this way and that, stroked and tolerated

but her eyes, hazel?, were made for the haze

of a long, long road. She seemed to have no edges.

I’m throwing it from the Golden Gate, she said.

I rested my hand on her shoulder,

the strap of her top under my fingers.

We drove into orange darkness.

Robbie Frazer won first prize in the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize competition in 2018.  
www.dempseyandwindle.com/robbie-frazer

Ah! And there it is: the slow collapse to rain.

I turn from the window, my tea now cold.

His irises clouded, skin a membrane.

Sheets: milk-white, hard, tight shroud him - jack-knifed, old.

Used to make me sit in his TV throne;

fed me marshmallows and paté on bread,

talked of strong women of Athens or Rome.

I turn to the glass: cars, wipers, bowed heads.

I touch our condensed breath. A drop balloons.

Outnumbered, it gorges, fattens, falls.

Later, when crocuses have come and gone,

his shed: tea bags, clear milk and overalls.

Hauntings of compost torn half-open, spill

onto crusted gloves and mouldering sill.

Robbie Frazer won first prize in the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize competition in 2018.  
www.dempseyandwindle.com/robbie-frazer