I don’t want to watch the new hit series

inspired by the action-adventure-survival-horror

video game franchise about the zombie end

of the world, which everyone is raving about

because even though the gays still die in the end

they have a long and tender relationship

before their tear-jerking conclusion.

I don’t want to watch it, even though as a teen

I was keen on post-apocalyptic fiction

about atom bombs and nuclear winters

and shadows burnt on walls in (what I called)

Hiro-shee-ma, though I knew the threat

was real and terrifying and afterwards

I couldn’t sleep or had radioactive dreams.

Back then I had the confidence or naivete

to identify with the lead, the character

we travelled with and felt for and who might

see terrible things and may suffer and might

behave pathetically and/or heroically but

would somehow see it through to the end.

I am more easily scared now, it feels too close –

not the zombies, just the preposterous frailty of it all

and with more perspective I know in my liver

I could just as easily, in fact, am even more likely

to be a bit-part: perhaps ‘Woman on Street no. 2’,

who is not even the first to be bitten or infected,

or stabbed or eaten, just a nameless sacrifice

to the plot exposition. I don’t want to watch

disaster movies either when my safety so far

feels like dumb luck and I know that bushfires

and floods don’t discriminate. Yesterday I watched

the glorious rococo towers of a thunderstorm

steaming in from the south-west at sunset and

the gum trees waving new growth from this year’s rain

and the green beads of fruit forming on

the tomato plants in the garden and the limbs

of children. Even though the children aren’t mine

and the notion of beauty in the ephemeral is

oh-so-tired, their beauty isn’t. The transience

is a seasoning so piquant I can’t swallow it

and in the dramatic light I remember that you

and I and ‘Woman on Street No.2’ are each

the main character in our own limited series

and sometimes we travel with or feel for each other

and I might see terrible things and I may suffer

and I might behave pathetically and/or heroically

and somehow I will see it through to the end.