David Gairdner – Wind

The government claimed my house and designated it as an area for wetlands rejuvenation. It’s been 30 years since I last said goodbye to my house. Owls, frogs and crickets replace the sound of my brother and me playing the video game Mortal Combat, crying out in laughter as we sever spinal cords and freeze and shatter.

‘Finish him!’

The poster of Terminator sitting on a motorbike, shotgun over shoulders, which covered up a hole in the wall, is gone now. The hole is gone now. The wall is gone now. The 1990s was a nasty, violent and fun time. We’d get bungas (small firecrackers and blow up ants’ nests. The ants are all now dead from the fire of from waterways, which congealed into stagnant pools. Mosquitoes feast on native birds and marsupials.

As I stand in the miserly light of stars, they taste a blood distinct from those creatures. A blood that foremothers had suckled at, on a dying afternoon 30 years ago. My skin was soft then. I return from the swamp accepting that the house is truly gone. Stagnation is life for many, inside a swamp, or inside those humid grey arteries. I hear the wind wherever I go.