It was a self imposed exile that led her to the funeral pyres of New York City.
Queensland’s golden beaches had iodised
corroded
each grain of sand was a rusting fish hook
holding her back
digging deep, deep, deep.
She had been bruised and battered
and broken
burnt,
almost buried.
Her esteem exhumed from deep between her ribs
and the largest island on earth
became a cage.
It was in the ashes of this city,
where the rubble still weighed heavy in the hearts
of the roaches, the rats
and reborn
she found an Englishman in the midst of a typhoon.
For three full days the winds and the mist
battered at the windows
but the whalers whaled,
hit after hit
the harpoon dug deep, deep, deep.
With each harpoon hit the hooks were released
and the reborn rats celebrated in the streets,
they had found their roach
and in a sea of stars and stripes
and blue, white and red
the rubble was cleared from their hearts.
She wanted to disappear into the streets of the city,
to lose her face,
become a ghost.
But with eyes the colour
of hundred dollar bills
she was pollen to Wall Street wasps.
Everyday they tried to sting her skin
everyday their needles missed.
Even though her skin stayed intact,
the attempts acted as acupuncture.
It took a few months but she found herself
in those streets and in the skyline
over looking the park in the centre of the city.
Eventually when she thought of home
the rusting hooks crumbled into sand,
the bars corroded
and she longed for home.
She left the rubble,
the rats
and roaches behind,
she felt the sand glowing gold between her toes.
She found a writer to re-write her woes.
She exiled the rust,
the harpoons and the hooks.
She imprisoned the warden and calmed the typhoon.
