“he asked why I raced that fast while I was still putting back my heart into my / chest panting & scared I took a fishy look at him & replied I thought it was gunshots…”

“She pulled my tenderness from me, pulled / its soft body against the beds of oysters / and lit the remains fluorescent, the better / to clearly see. She named this act science…”

“A researcher specialising in copyright law at Harvard university, Primavera de Fillipi launched Plantoid in 2018. Plantoids are blockchain-based ‘organisms’ which reproduce by way of Bitcoin pollination. In the dark I see it; I see the seed. / It illuminates the byway, it begs for / a meeting midway. Biomorphic homecoming, I approach / curiously…”

“Magpies are known to lie on the ground in groups. It is a play behaviour called co-lying…”

“I listen to the sharp buzz of fluorescent lights / Absorb the terrain of shelves / Dodge the bodies…”

“So much was lost in the heatwave. The dirt wouldn’t take the water, as if already surrendering…”

“Rain patters as callused fingers glide // Drifting arrives a scent of willow…”

“I sit in a garden of half-assed patchwork, Of decades of just-enough maintenance // And occasional fits of resolutions to clean things up…”

“My lolo is here. He is always here in stillness. The sharp contrast of his voice to the trees. In the driveway of our family home, he waved at every passerby…”

“Water swelled blue-black around her knees, the candle light floating a little way ahead, in the unmoving air of the underground. She’d been here many times before, stuck the melting bases of candles to nearby rocks to light up the entire chamber…”

“I’ll amplify you, Carer in contrast. Scraped across winter’s bunkers…”

“I am honey melting in her green tea irises. I dimly hallucinate through the iterations of evolution which have fashioned me into an animal whose sole purpose is to bathe in her eyes. She draws me into her overheated chest, and I count the pretty moles on the side of her arm…”

“That west end of the island // never looked // the same after a storm…”

“I saw the way grief entered your body—all at once and consuming—and stayed, eating you away. I prayed it wouldn’t bury you…”