I’m letting things stick that shouldn’t, like chewing gum clinging to the bottom of a shoe,
you can never quite pull off all the remnants,
the remains harden until they become part of the shoe,
the way these thoughts have been residing in my brain since I woke,
they’re going stale in here and it’s well past noon,
there’s a clock ticking in my peripheral vision
it spits out an old familiar tune
every 15 minutes,
clockwork makes us look backwards, to where we’ve been, who we’ve been,
takes me back to my childhood home in Tasmania,
situated diagonal from the town clock tower,
resounding chimes ring through my ear drums as I climb the attic ladder
dolls, and tent parts and old letters,
fading family photos and pre-school paintings, tucked in the corners, spilling into the doorway,
makes you look at the way
some things stay but they shouldn’t,
the way the past comes to haunt us
when we don’t dispose of the palpable,
as when memories stay in the foreground, the (rubbish) tip
can’t process them and reuse them somewhere more fruitful