The Dead Letter

that summer morning arrived hot and sticky, the air thick and close, bright sun blasting through the kitchen window while the girls tore around the place scribbling homework frantic, yanking plimsolls from under beds, hunting lunch boxes, stuffing in raisins and cucumber slices and little yoghurt tubs – all that packed-lunch madness before the school bell screamed.

the postman dropped it through the slot with the bills and the shiny catalogues and the greasy pizza flyers — one envelope standing out, postmark from way down under, the franking all skewed with mad tropical birds, feathers blazing red and gold, yellow eyes staring like they knew the secret of the world.

it was crisp and white, five-by-eight, folded tight, and inside — photographs of my mother smiling eternal, a note in his handwriting, and that small cellophane wrap sealed like a kiss across oceans, grey powder clinging static to the plastic. a tenth of her, the rest already poured into the wine-dark sea, my old man alone on the other side of the planet, sending love and sadness and best wishes. and I held it to my chest and wept like a child lost in the nothingness.

standing in the hall,
her smile sealed in cellophane,
the morning goes on.