O ANIMUS (Annie Blake)

I didn’t want anything more.
In the little aboriginal house, the shower
fell with the cup of water
that was evenly distributed.
I wanted you there. You were there.

Our mouths eating the sun
and the jungles and the monsoon rains
pouring over us. The skies
were clean. They are windows.
The leaves are green —

in the shape of human hands.
I run my fingers along the hot veins
under your skin,
the bits of earth — our soul
sitting in between your lips,

the mud in your hair.
Your eyes are on me now
and this is when I hold you —
I say, Let us wash
away our sins together.


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Annie Blake is an Australian writer who has poetry forthcoming in GFT Press and Southerly. She has also been published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, About Place Journal, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and more. Her poem ‘These Grey Streets’ has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by Vine Leaves Literary Journal. She is excited about the process of individuation, research in psychoanalysis, philosophy and cosmology. She is a former teacher who lives in Melbourne with her husband and five kids. You can visit her on Facebook, Pinterest, Goodreads and on her blog.