Lee Fraser
Elevation, Eastern Highlands
Ten whiteskins rattle, truck-borne, leaving
orientation camp, winding the kilometres,
the hours, up from sea level.
Amniotic air cools. From bench seats, pull on
layers we shed three months ago, push back
strange tears for ex-strangers who
became fast-forward family.
A hurtling return to
what we laboured to let go of:
worldview, skirt habits, eye contact norms
definitions of sanitary, cargo, sorry, comfort.
5,000 ft. air shrivels, potholes grow, join hands
a bridge, a gate: this mission town
swapping landlines instead of mosquito bite tallies
not even goodbye but something
is dying. Talk soon.
A door, keys: ‘my’ keys. Welcome to your new home.
Old default now unfamiliar: flat floor, smooth
bedspread, shiny white walls stand
to attention, for calibration to my whims.
We renounced this mode–and now resume it?
Coat hangers, desks, doorhandles, shelves,
I am four again: Is this all for me?
Photocopied arrival handouts, not humidity-limp
perch on the clean bed edge. Flip through altitude
adjustments, town map, store and clinic hours; search
for handwriting that pops, human, amongst the typing.
Gone is the coast, our uneasy womb
now high and dry.