Every Perfect Line of Vision.

This memory where you are sitting at the kitchen bench watching your Step Mum cook dinner.   Through the windows, over the cluttered counter   the sky is all blue glow and sun setting. The soft twilight resting its head   against swollen jade tree branches and flocks of cockatoos,   just specks in the skylights,    heading home.

Chopping board clatters in the sink,   she’s preparing you all a roast chicken. Thyme, lemongrass and wisdom. She fills the cavity with salty breadcrumbs and   uses twine to tie its legs together.

You think what it would be like to      tie your legs together. like that,  helpless.          Dead thing, at peace, like that. Dead thing.

              While she stuffs a chicken,               filling the hollow with salty breadcrumbs               so that it will cook even.

Her tough, scar striken fingers   pushing breadcrumbs into a chicken to help it cook.

Your feet heavy hung                                 your back like incision.                                      The sun spinning out from every perfect line of vision

and speaking to the     creaking oven door, and smiling at the exhaust fan’s humming.

The outside world enfolds itself in dark-         full like the inside of a fridge with the door closed.

Picture it.

            You are the bench.             You are the window.        You are the twilight             caught but not keeping.

            You are the jade.          You are the knife.             You are the fingers.             You are the lemongrass.             You are the            chicken.