Spineless

You are

The Queensland cane fields I keep
finger painting. Feathered flowers, honeysuckle,
wheat and the soft pastels found in Romanticism.
I stopped thinking you were sweet when I started
savouring your touch like the last banana slice in a
sugar filled yogurt. You were the empty highways
between green grass and cows, the kind we suddenly
became tangled on. You are the scent of paint;
mango trees, bush bees because those are the
only kind you're not allergic to.

I am

The cane toads sucking the sweetness
from your decay. An afternoon zephyr, cinnamon,
stale oats and the confusion found in abstraction.
I stopped thinking you were sour when I became
hungry for the sweet perfume that was your neck. I am
the low fat everything that faded the softness of my
curves, an expiry date, spilt milk and the red lights that
have kept us from designing an atlas together.
I was the vanilla shower gel washing the paint
from the canvas of your body, a cyclone,
a reaction and

tombstones inscribed with these
spineless poems.