I was seven years old when I learned about death

A boy who lived on the same floor of the block of flats

Red brick stacked 3 high

Filling cabinets for down-on-their-luck aussies

And immigrants that dared to roll the dice

Red brick

Pleated into the lap of a suburb where freight trains covered in graffiti

Run on blue-collar power

Steel meeting steel rattling in the dialect

Of the euthanised proletariat

When I stood in the middle of the courtyard

The walkways perfectly framed my zenith

Old folks would put buckets out during heavy rains

Uncles would sing loudly with hot thoughts, reliving acoustic dreams

They would only share halfway through their second bottle of cheap bourbon

My sister would play double Dutch all day with the other girls on the block

Bumping the new Salt-N-Pepa tape on a boom box Spinderella cutting it up one time 
The boy who taught me about death was 2 years younger

A boy who would spend the last summer of his life running up and down the picture frame balcony boardwalk

Flapping a pair of wings his Lola and Lolo made for him

Such care they must have taken

Cutting the cardboard cereal boxes into wings before feathering them with torn-up napkins

His arms moved so fast as he ran

Even as he stretched them out to rest as he soared from floor to floor

It wasn’t hard to imagine them bursting into flames 
But the summer would end with his skinny arms burning like kindling

Fire cackling like a group of hyenas

Innocent laughter and predators are normally seen holding hands

The summer would end with him finally taking flight 
All summer, I watched as he ran past open doors

His small body like a finger turning pages

His body a flash of speed

Cloaked with vistas into other cultures

That welcomed strangers with the smell of cooking food 
Ginger, turmeric, garlic, soy sauce,

Chicken adobo frying

Oxtail sinigang on the boil

Full-bodied aromas interrupting beige conversation with warrior headdress and bells

woven into fabric that needed translating to the English-speaking neighbours 
I was only 2 years older, but I was already embarrassed by his childishness

Now, a lifetime later, I know I was jealous of his innocence 
One hot morning in January, a man knocked on his grandparents’ door

His mother had a life to live

And his father had a life he owed, so his grandparents became beasts of their burden 
The man knocked

And when his Lola answered

And the strange man asked her in the language they both spoke

If her grandson would like to go swimming

Of course, she trusted him 
The boy was drowned at Footscray pools

No one noticed until his body, floating face down, scared another child

No one on the block said anything

Both his grandparents sat with unflinching eyes

Standing still forever like children of war 
His parents never came to visit

I quickly forgot his name

The sound of his laugh  not being there was the only way to notice his absence 
But years later, I would see his ghost sitting in bus stops

Dusty men with grey skin and blue lips

Men with paper wings

Men who lived too long to become angels