I can sit here forever in the coffee shop beside the Korean Grocer

watching Brunswick St as the lights come on like in Hyper-reactive

(the award-winning poem by Melody Paloma) feeling like cardboard in the rain

…it won’t last! yells a toddler chasing her father down the footpath

or that’s what I think she says. Fitzroy: where your clothes scream

more-than-just-a-creative, but your tea leaves spell INHERITED WEALTH

I stop to see my reflection in the shop window as I try to accept

the person I have become underneath all this hair    which trails

after me     a lag of long exposure to a bench around the corner

like the misshapen heart the barista gave my coffee

someone’s lost keys    empty pallets    a random pantofle

this skip in the laneway someone has tagged incoherently

with a waterproof posca pen: around me     things change

like shifting sheets of ice in a David Attenborough documentary

bread left out for birds swells & dissolves like the news

it tastes a little different than the day before — or do I just

want it to? on Instagram I see a tattoo that says NOTHING LASTS

in bright rainbow colours — the bench too wet to sit on

(it’s still drizzling) which reminds me of something my dad

once said to me in a flash storm: that heavy rain never lasts long

anyway    I enjoy my soggy donut