Heat Sink

What was it you said on the phone that time

the line hissed from the missile’s radiation

I could hardly hear from the code spluttering

binaries of last night’s undeliverable lullaby

and ether blacked out by the goodnight 

algorithm          what was it you said

that we snuck past a checkpoint 

revenging from contradictions

overstacking in the till       what

can’t I remember and don’t know how

can brolgas unfold under the same moon

that washes over predictive craters 

and the data-pointed displaced limbs 

of oh god another and another and 

today we didn’t have time to bury

the possum before work only enough

moments for a good morning 

to the unanswerable grief out here

hollowing our histories before dawn

I am struggling to hold information 

I struggle to accept 

but I remember someone saying almost 

two hundred schoolgirls

before a voice broke                  maybe mine

and I think you told me about a river

I swear it was a river

but might have been another bomb