Their house has the taste of salt
Pictures framed for satire
Balsamic vinegar ripening
Offset with olive oil
They know themselves
What they love
What they take seriously
What they scoff at
Or dismiss
They laugh well, between themselves and their close circle
It’s almost its own world
An earthy prism
Rich with time
Sunshine intercepted
By curling vines and herbs
Lemon trees
And lattices
There is an old bathtub outside
They fill it up from a hose attached to the kitchen sink
For rusty bubble baths under the stars
Hot and cold
Beers and lamington tea
He has prepared some rollies
Having quit over a decade ago
He said he wanted to buy tobacco one last time
I like the look of the filters in his top pocket
I’ll remember him like that
I’m remembering him even while he is still in front of me
I find myself memorising things I never noticed before
I don’t see many books at all,
But there is a model of a ship, and an old compass
I imagine him looking to them
Navigating his fictitious children
On a furious sea
Playing God
Their cats weave around, and look at us directly
Why are you here?
We are here to mourn something that hasn’t happened yet
Dad says that the visits are his living wake, in a way
Dad holds his brother’s body in the hunch of his own shoulders
Perhaps it is his responsibility
Why do we find it so hard to say any of the things
That will be said once he is gone?
I swear for him, to show I mean it
It’s so shit
This doesn’t land – how can it?
He cannot carry our projected burdens
When he still has heavy gifts
Three glorious, painful months to fill
He must deflect my words
And yet he does not deflect me
He holds me in his attention
Each of us, in fact
And assures us
He has wrapped his head around it
He’s not stoic, Mum says
He is full of grace
I’ve never heard her use that word before
Liesje cries in the laundry
To Mum
But I am there
With my baby
Watching
She’s angry
At the system
Angry at her own anger
At her inability to heal him
She is a vet
She has seen death move
And stall
And speak
She has lost people
Suffering their absences
But she has survived
Held by him, in his odd and sideways gaze
Kept alive by their gentle symbiosis
Their hours in that house
Shared and apart
She grips his presence
Both surrendered and unwilling
It’s not about having an audience
It’s having a place to be afraid
How she will be seen
Once the witness to her life
Has lost that vision
We watch her
Arguing with the circumstances
And not with him
Outside, in the winter shade,
He says
The only drug he never tried
Was cocaine
I’ve read a couple of his books, and I believe it
Mum jokes that I could get him some
And you know, part of me wants to
Part of me would do anything to be a part of his life
Before his death
But I’m distant, feeling useless
One of twenty-three nephews and nieces
And not one that ever loved him with expert intention
Before now
Now
I must watch
And I must give my baby to Liesje’s trembling arms
Like lavender to a dark room
Holding is sometimes better than being held
This pain is not about us
But
I am afraid of the wave
The wait
Reeks of inevitability
Freedom
Cinnamon
And salt
The roaring silence says
Do not leave us
He hosts us
In the open doorway
With the tender breeze
Letting us have tea and small talk
Letting us look at him
Letting us memorise this
He does not need to remember
But he does not avert his gaze.
