Content Warnings (click to reveal)
Discussed: miscarriage, domestic violence
Bits and bobs
We finished our work together,
my daughter and I,
gathered our tools, the knife and awl,
the needles and thread, scraps of leather,
the “bits and bobs”, as she said,
then asked, what does that phrase mean, anyway?
Bits are small pieces, parts
bitten off, detached from a greater whole;
fragments, chunks, sliced, cut, torn and sheared;
think of a shred of paper, scraps of food,
a broken marriage,
love that ends too soon,
time spent in a doctor’s waiting room,
discarded things – old tampons, staples removed –
partial truths, excuses used,
a teacup broken, plates thrown,
unformed thoughts, forgotten words.
While a bob is a small weight,
a bunched item, a rounded mass,
a concentrate,
like a sinker at the end of a line
or the plumb bob the carpenter drops
to keep his work straight,
hair cut short and thick, a tail docked,
knotted ribbons,
a coloured stone on a woman’s lobe,
the sharp move from a heavy fist.
It calls to mind
the embryo pendant in the womb,
the small mass that gathers itself and swells
like hanging fruit;
I had a child before her, a cluster of cells
that never grew
and the loss, enormous then, is now
another moment, no more
nor less than every other, each one held
by the next in line,
like beads, the bits and bobs,
strung to make a life.
Empty Nest
You stripped your bed before you left,
Shoved rubbish in to the basket’s brim,
Cleared evidence of study from your desk
And took the boxes and bags you filled.
Though dust lay in corners, marks on walls,
And in the cupboard a jumble of shoes,
Odd socks, shirts and jeans two sizes too small,
Ragged things that are childhood’s residue.
No point nagging you now to clean the mess,
You are grownup, gone to a world where wrongs
Are recorded by those who make no room
For such small gestures, weary and careless
Witnesses, who will not slip your first watch
Into a pocket, before going to fetch a broom.
Lapwing
The sharp cry of the plover, like a page
Roughly torn, wakes me in the night
And for a moment I am dazed
And wonder whether it is morning,
But no margin of light from outside
Frames the window’s drawn blind,
So I stay as I am and still my heart
By thinking of all my loved ones
Safe in bed in their varied places,
Knowing this is a state rare
In this day and age, to be free
Of immediate fear, though I worry
That like the fierce lapwing,
I should be calling an alarm
Before it is too late, my small cry
Carried on the wind, pleading
Like all the other desperate voices
A deal with fate against the world,
In the face of threats unknown, growing,
To let my chicks sleep undisturbed
And have me suffer instead.
Allaana Bills is a teacher and poet living on beautiful Ugarapul Country in South-East Queensland. She engages with themes of womanhood, history and the natural world. She is currently working on a verse novel set on the Gold Coast in 1975.
Locative Magazine 