can you see the sun on my chin

I remember holding buttercups under my chin and asking can you see the sun on my chin can you see the sun on my chin can you see the sun on my chin

I remember plucking sorrel from laybys on the single track road and chewing on the sweet sour with no worry at all about dog piss no worry at all

I remember having knock knees or bandy legs and a pink dress above the knock knees or the bandy legs and an unnamed flower, yellow maybe, in each hand   the photograph assures my memory I was smiling   maybe so

I remember so many first days at schools I’ve forgotten what order they were in and even what flag fluttered in the playgrounds where I was too feart to play British Bulldogs or some other nationalist brag

I remember falling over drunk and skinning my knees outside Bannerman’s Bar and meeting a boy man I’d never meet again

I remember when we realised the driver of the purple or was it lilac Combi was illiterate and we’d missed 17 turns to Lismore in 13 hours

I remember the trapped pink in my cheeks when he told me he was a male model and what was he thinking being with me

I remember marrying a man that doesn’t share memories with me anymore

I remember feeding the blind Pekin bantam from a teaspoon every day for a week until we found her, me and the man that I no longer share memories with, stiff feet up, slaughtered by her feather-footed cousins

I remember wanting to kill them, to wring their necks with my ringed fingers, but what would have been the point of that

I remember, with another man that I don’t share memories with, being passed a baby wrapped in pale rags through a train window and everyone weeping except the baby, was it even alive?

I remember I was at physio and she was twisting turning twisting my arm neck shoulder and there were three missed calls and my father was dead

I remember when I fell over in the street running for the 26 bus, wearing a fake leopard skin knee length coat and Austrian brown ankle boots with a little pink bow at the side of each heel

I remember that he wore glasses and so did I

I remember losing my flip flops in a Peruvian mud forest and hanging onto the bare-footed guide with tears in my eyes and a squadron of fantastical leaches carving up my calves

I remember falling in love with a moto-taxi driver in a town full of bandits as my helmet with no strap dipped and dived as we slid around corners the exhaust burning a belting stripe across my bare ankle

I remember times when I didn’t understand that chaos was the natural order of the world and now I don’t remember the way back to that world not even the first step

I remember tramping in moss soaked hills and through gum seared mist and I remember the moment I knew I’d never go tramping again

I remember laughing at his corduroy suit and then not laughing when he died

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later, a day later

I remember the other man I don’t share memories with and it startles, this lack of memory, and I pick a buttercup and I say

can you see the sun under my chin