By Madison
Date: 6 November 2000

take-out

He wheeled the curve through a slush 
of rutted road to three distinct slices of light, 
each warm square with its own glow of 
tilting amber, the familiar frame of house 
and heavy limbs scratching at its roof.  
Her candles, he remembered how 
she burned them endlessly.

Drunken prawn with oyster sauce and 
fortune condoms leaned into the last hard 
pull to the right, collective passengers in route.  
Headlights dimmed below the metal hood
thumping of stray raindrops from the trees. 

A footpath led the way to her gate, 
to a simple mat signed in chi or feng shui, 
or something he may have heard her say 
about the wind or water, get a grip
he had thought.  Her own thoughts shoved like 
pent up Brahmans through a cattle guard, 
past anything carnal now,
past her own startled lips,
streaming through the crack of light
born from her opened door.  

It was nothing, nothing but a pencil line,
a thin scant thread beside the white space 
looming since their last good-bye.  Her words 
poured like liquid prayer beads, they poured 
in plastic wash pails to his shoes, with no regret,
they joined the overlay of mud and leaves.  
What he missed, she heard.  What he couldn't
understand, she learned and knew by rote.  
She watched him go.
She tried to hear the ocean.
And imagined what dull stone he'd choose to 
scrape the mud, the leaves.



M Madison
06 nov 2000