memories of mother hands cool on skin

soft love not for bruising
current steep reading words and stories

Goenpul woman Arrernte poet Gomeroi scholar
blistering epic daily humming histories

each story its own 
ordinary love conversation

but common refrain mother to child:
‘be careful of white women’
                                    [protest: I am not one of those: they are not me]

                                    [hold the words: don’t spit: let them coat my gums]
melt the looking glass that has shaped this body

let ‘me’ slide from my tongue
writing that speaks into white space pages

an invitation are you listening 
holding notes that have vibrated

in bones for centuries
what we inherit can be so quiet

it takes another voice to dial the volume up
reading stories to peel back

skin of the past
ordinary love conversation

my mother to me
‘be careful when crossing the street

driving a car    walking on your own at night’
in our household

where three white girl women lived
we didn’t talk about power

and bodies
actions of ancestors that moulded

where we stepped
no mention of

                                     [raised to be kind but—]

                                     [is silence violent or merely careless]
talk was sports bodies

‘I saw Evonne Goolagong play!’
‘Isn’t she brilliant—Cathy Freeman!’

no need to be schooled about 
how women might—              harm—

to stay safe from—                  bodies like—
writing is re-writing

an invitation are you listening	
how to trace the imprints of

this ordinary body