Last time I saw you
during the autumn of ninety-two
we got drunk at Jimmy Watson’s
celebrating your girlfriend’s twentieth
You wore your t-shirt inside out
making some kind of statement
and whispered about the lessons
you were learning from your older
woman. You leant in close
confessed you had abandoned
the religion of your childhood.
Free from guilt and the notion of sin
you were taking drugs and fucking
furiously making up for lost time.
As the party disintegrated
you accompanied me to the door
shook my hand before I walked
away towards the tram stop
unaware of the schism
that would keep us apart
Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool and raised in Ballarat, Brisbane & Shepparton. He now resides in Texas. He is the author of two chapbooks, Suburban Exile: American Poems (2011) and Symptoms of Homesickness (2010), both published by Picaro Press, and a recipient of an Emerging Writers Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Over one hundred of his poems have been published in journals & anthologies around the world, including Antipodes, Australian Love Poems 2013, Cordite, LiNQ, Blackmail Press, Harvest, Transnational Literature, Mascara, Windmills, Postcolonial Text, Prosopisia, Red River Review, Tincture and Social Alternatives.