'One final word on the Christmas Island pipistrelle.

March. Zipped wings
your overnight bag.
 
No sonar nets
the sky btw
 
just spread
sheets for how does it end?
 
How tf did you lose
a whole micro bat species?
 
It’s none of my business – not you
not the species profile and threats report – except
 
sometimes I chart your voice
in the kitchen,
 
the graphic of love and loss on the cold tiles where
I fish serious onions from the sink.
 
And once
            a decayed banana skin
 
            alive and hand winging
            wrapped my fingers in bat.
 
A single message from me
the branch you hung from back then.
 
            ‘Lovely specimen.
            Common insect eater, female.’
 
            I named her Banana.
            She lasted two days in a box with flies.
 
Your turn. Little bombs
my phone’s bleak glass.
 
Three weeks: ‘Arrived thanks’
–  rubble between the ‘A’ and ‘nks’
 
has you fresh off the Christmas Island charter
sidestepping the detention centre (and our marriage)
 
like you’re the whole goddamn Australian government.
You eat at a place called Settlement.
 
I wrap the last of your gumboot tea
in the distribution map
 
watch it bleed
a new zone through the emptied detention, the no-species habitat.
 
Two weeks: ‘Fine here. Pipistrelle identified.’
One week.
 
Fingers on my laptop how
the membranes grow between.
 
Antenna set for the high species zone.
I stare into the sink.
 
Who needs eyes – you wrote that once – when microphones
bloom so sharp?
 
Extinction does
it turns out. The recorded presence of nothing.
    
If I send this now close your eyes
let the message tone
 
echolocation – a forestful or
at least
 
two bats
instead of one.