The cold fire in the sky has set
taking you along, 
one who must shoot that perfect
picture at a strange pier
where foreign boats had docked,
the glorious years marked
by smiling Tausug women and their braves. 

No venoms spewed then
from the land of vintas,
of quick hands

To stand astern a departing boat
And watch your home drift away,
Scrawny stilts, roofs and crooked windows;
To watch a million shards of light multiply
Between you and the vanishing landmarks:
Belfry, tower and mountain sink
Into the thin line of blue infinity;
To feel the heave,

We are alone, no matter that the world
consoles us, in our grief of losing those
we should precede in death.

Who chooses us to share, between ourselves,
the sudden absence of these laughing youth
who could someday be jewels of the earth?

Gone, bloated flotsam, suspended in the

Towards our sixties,
fire gone from our eyes,
light now within
drawing the moths
of your desires
only to extinguish them.

For your sake.
Some got such wisdom
earlier, by grace,
but we had
the energy to burn,
I guess,

Or perhaps
the demons to expel.
Having been singed
ourselves
we

Shalini Akhil was born in Fiji in 1973 and currently lives in Melbourne. Her first novel, The Bollywood Beauty, was released in August by Penguin Australia. An earlier version of the novel was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2004 prize for an unpublished