For my friend, N.
brotherfriend, she met him near the tidal river, where the jacarandas break their bloom. he sang her Presley and Sinatra and told her of the fall- skull-side, Broca-Wernicke side, brain space where words are born after the fall and his syntax silenced and morphemes meandering. he couldn’t speak but could sing Summertime, because you always remember your first song.
brotherfriend, she met him near the tidal river, where the terriers piss on her buttress root stage, and the magpies munch worms in their paperbark stalls. he watched her from his Tarago, but it wasn’t that sort of watching and it wasn’t that sort of van and he chose his words as though tasting, moving from mouth roof to tongue tip to lip so she caught the words in her eyes long before hearing sisterfriend with the fiddle, I didn’t want to disturb. brotherfriend, she said, I was born disturbed, beneath the sclerophyll sky, the air here is free take a seat, sing wordless for me.
brotherfriend she met him near the tidal river, where the mangroves swallow second-hand breath he used to have nouns, abstract, proper, collective they used to hang from him and slide slipshod into speech. clever was a mask made of words, quick as the blue tailed wrens, brotherfriend he sang to the aged, the dopamine deficient/ amyloid plaqued brain dying, -I bought him this before he passed. I can’t remember its name, three strings I’m leaving Sydney soon and I’d like you to have this-
sisterfriend novice fiddler, joy junkie (connoisseur) sisterfriend she walked from the tidal river, where the wordless gather in sound because the jacarandas break their bloom and the terriers mark their trees and the mangroves gift them air and sisterfriend she walked towards heavy heat and bitumen boiling, a dead man’s dulcimer speaking simply against her sweat coated skin.
Word upon Word 