distant event

By Adam Gibson

she had tenancy troubles,
a flatmate with an eye for her at night, late,
moving in for a kiss that
she made him miss:
she moved out the next day
and never went back.

there followed sharehouses
in the sharehouse suburbs of shareburbia
among young professionals
in some vague field of
accountancy or IT or design or IT design
or accountancy designing for IT:
i don't know, i lost track.

but then backpackers arrived
back from somewhere and
brought with them a lousy itch
which took up swift residence in her room
and she told me (with rings under her eyes)
that she needed a room/any room
to escape the bugs and the scratching
and the bugs and the scratching
and i tried to think of solutions
but could think of none.

and soon a guy she'd mentioned
had become a boy and then a
boy she was seeing and then
a boyfriend and then
a boyfriend she was moving in with

i'm not jealous,
it's just a good face i see
when i look at hers
and a face i like
and i'm pleased to see it –
among sentinels of unacted dreams
and flattened spirits,
she keeps her eyes blue
even when ruined by tiredness,
crushed with no sleep or
drugged with stress.

she is running now,
in training for some distant event
that i've never heard of and
probably won't see competed.

i haven't even sponsored her for her cause:
i know i should, but i like to maintain
our sense of vague disappointment with the world

just between us.