It’s been three weeks since I cleaned the bathroom

and it hasn’t been cleaned since. But that’s what you get

in a share house – a glorified squat for people

who don’t want to pay full rent but dress it up

as ‘community minded’ – a place where conversations

about the fairest division of the gas bill take place

over the compost bin. You could say, hopeful of heart,

that it’s a family, which it is – dysfunctional –

the air seething with PMT, all of us rolling

out yoga mats to the sound of the kettle boiling,

the fridge stocked with kale and coconut water

but never meat. We’re a generation of ideological orphans

building Zion in Marrickville, our dyed hair a symbol

of our kinship – while the original residents, the old-school

Greek immigrants, gaze bewildered from their porches

as hordes of us jog past them of a morning,

farting smugness. I’m so far from home,

from the buzz-cut lawns and yipping dogs, from kitchens

with microwaves and African violets softly dying

beside disinfected sinks. These days I take comfort

in YouTube and weed on nights where the urge

to give up on this poetry caper becomes overwhelming –

the fear that there’s nothing you can do to avoid

becoming your mother so you might as well swallow

your insolence, move back to the suburbs and give birth

in front of the TV. These days I force my focus

onto whatever the present moment happens to reveal –

organic toothpaste, bowls caked with chia seeds,

my own face glimpsed in the mirror like seeing

a celebrity in a cafe – the intimate recognition

of a stranger in this, the mediocre immediate.