Permission to disappear

Poetry selected for publication in Verge 2025: Blue

Permission to disappear

I WANT TO disappear, or to splinter.
    If I was a bird I would fly south for the winter.

How can the world be so damn hard
    and so devastatingly beautiful at the same time?

It is another autumn sunset, red and deep blue,
    the kind even the birds forget to sing for, 

in awe of how still 
    this rushing world can be.

My little son is in hospital fighting for his life.
    I cannot fly without him, so I must stay this season.

Must stay, and now the magpies are done
    I sing a minor tune, to myself, 

or to the crooked trees
    in shadows under the moon.

Then, as if in answer the drip machine is in song,
    calling the end of another infusion.

A robotic, almost-currawong. We sing together in unison:
    the sun has set but this one fights on.

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Some background

I wrote the first draft of this poem in May 2024, looking out the window to Royal Park from a room in the Cockatoo Ward at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne/Naarm.

Like most of my writing, it sat in my Notes app for a long time, staring at me, longingly, before I was brave enough to let anyone else see it.

The poem’s title is a reference to Joseph Tawadros' song of the same name.

This poem was first published (in a slightly different format, and without the punctuation — I have a love/hate relationship with punctuation) in Monash University’s literary journal Verge 2025: Blue. Verge 2025 is full of beautifully crafted writing by some amazing writers, all exploring the theme “blue”. A big thank you to the editors for selecting my work for inclusion in the 2025 publication.