Monopoly

1. Kent Road, Wooloowin

the landlord sold in under a fortnight.

took us by surprise. we packed up

and rented a place on the same street. 

stuffed in three rooms, we transplanted the fridge

from kitchen to deck, still full of milk 

and ice-fringed packs of weekday meat.

it sat for weeks on the whitening timber, 

collecting ants in its chilled coils. 

splinters nibbed our bare feet 

when we came out each morning 

for eggs or jam. it hummed 

through umber afternoons when heat

thickened air to wax, until in december

we took a holiday and a circuit snapped

off the power for a week.

on the deck when we came back: masses 

of flies and neighbourhood cats; meat

seething in the dark freezer.

2. Vine Street, Clayfield 

in this house we liked to doze under breezes 

in the hammock-hung yard

while inside kitchen chairs stewed 

in bedrooms, cutlery in vases lined the windows

and sent circles of light roaming the walls

like tiny gold animals. our dishwasher, trailing its cords

in the laundry, disgorged a wet plug of gunk

like an afterbirth, which we ignored.

we washed clothes day-to-day

in the kitchen sink, lived

with shirts hanging like colourful ghosts 

in windows and doorways

3. Bond Street, West End 

we signed the lease, moved everything in, 

future tensed through unpacked rooms: 

imagine a deck; imagine a pool. 

fluorescents cleansed us with astringent light 

as we unwound snares of plugless cords. fleets

of old batteries tacked and jibbed under our feet. 

light fittings shattered like wineglasses

in our hands, releasing the mild rain of a decade’s 

dead moths. we nabbed a cheap lounge 

and, like mafia bosses, happily snapped its legs off. 

we circled the bedroom with its sliding

doors and mirrors to the floor. so much 

still to do, but there we saw ourselves for the first time 

in a year: you were a thimble and I was a wheelbarrow.  

nobody wins on just rent and chance.