At dawn on my twenty fifth birthday
416 pilot whales beached themselves,
in the shallow tides at Farewell Spit.

I woke to rain on the wooden roof
of my new flat
and confused myself in unfamiliar blankets and
the words of your message,
written heartfelt and wobbly
in the early hours before morning,

caught in the marine ebb and flow,  
that stranded us too.

Andesitic magma
was leaching from a tectonic collision deep below
and burned itself out
on the side of a newly formed rend in the landscape
A languid lava flow both ruthless and viscous  

pyroclastic madness settled in a cooling atmosphere
forming ash and raining tephra which fell
quietly to earth  
to suffocate the burning
and everything else.

under ash clouds
under grey powder and stillness
no movement can be made.
Each breathe is sulphuric but the burning goes on

Don't worry yourself
think of the exploring you'll do alone
no one to drag you down

alone
alone
the word rings around my head
the most depressing decibel I ever heard.

No one to drag you down because
you have SUCH an imagination
how could this POSSIBLY be a bad thing
look in the dictionary under independant; you're the definition.

definition however
finds no hold in a mind made only of galaxies
the expanse is endless
thought can stretch so thin
I lose the beginning of an idea into space
and end up floating in the quiet vacuum of my head

I needed you
to be
the corners of my mind
a framework
to attach my grandiose ideas and give them meaning
to know
that I am more than just synapses
firing at random  into the dark
that I am a physical being.

I needed you to hinge me to reality,
because otherwise
I am just stardust and matter
trapped in a skull.

It's 3 am when you wake me
with cold hands in the shape of chords,
breathing stories and whiskey
spilled on the p.a by a guy
asking for songs.

In between saturday and sunday
you tell me about the  bikes
in town for the rally,
lining the streets in rows of inert thunder
while their people drank
and moved to the music you made.

It's 4 am
before morning finds the bluff
to light up the world's earliest hours
good morning you say
before we fall asleep,
laughing at your own joke.

Sunday is church day
said childhood, Mum and Mr. Jesus

I agree
said university days, a late night and a hangover
Sunday is a day of rest,
and there are many ways to keep the faith,  

like staying in bed.

Please say something, you implore
wearing a halo of uranium based fallout
lift the silence wrapped around your ghosts
hurt me
hate me
hit me with it.

Silence never volunteered itself as a barricade
it slipped its way into gaps left
by broken plates
broken bones
broken homes.

You are not the first to implore me
nor the first to disappoint me
but mutually assured destruction is a two way street
and I can't reverse the nuclear winter in my bones
just to appease the guilt you feel
for bombing everything we had.

I guess                     up
I could trip
the stairs  of
my mind
in time
to find
the line

I shouldn't have crossed.