What did he think, while I was gone
he'd done time in his head, was he still a mirror
did he waste his brain dancing in the abstract darkness?

Pain comes and goes, I notice things
I hadn't before, in the city the ibis stitching his voice
to the wind between the carpark and George Street

I think of shopping the supermarket with him
as under the blue trees in Hyde Park
bogong moths flutter in shafts of sunlight down Elizabeth

Maybe maybe maybe
and pain numbs you after the laughter
pain only exists to fill the empty holes his jokes made

Was Sydney Harbour real — did it still exist
after his murmuring late into the night when he drank
until his voice rustled with ribbons of blood and smoke?