By Tara Robinson
I want rolling hills / wind tearing through this hunk of metal / dogs sea-legged in the back / windows cranked down all the way / face blonde-licked / hurtling heart-first / towards everything and nothing / I want your hand / switching from gear stick to goose-fleshed thigh / I only touch you / where you can’t see / my palm on the back of your neck / hair bleeding through my fingers /
my love is shy
my need is ugly
I want endless eucalypt / branches reaching heaven-forward / roots cradling unmarked graves / insect choirs singing funeral hymns / I want you here / in this godless bushland / your eyes creek-bottom brown / peppered with fallen green /
you’re beautiful and you don’t believe me
I’m blue and I’m trying
swear this asphalt river / will carry us to salvation / we can keep driving / try to leave that mean night behind us / I will look out of the dusty window screen / stare down the sun and lose / wrap gauze over my burnt eyes / forget what I have seen / you will skin your knees on the gravel / repenting / hold my hand like an oath / until you have to put the car back into second / we will pretend not to notice /
the way the tires move on
but the dirt remembers
