grandad’s tinny

We slip out through the gate. Feet catching in the mud and the lie we’ve told ourselves. The path is crusher dust dreams and weeds. Our shoes are old and scuffed and they carry us to the water’s edge, Grandad’s little tinny resting in the mud and the reeds, high river eating her sides. We clamber in, awkward angles avoiding each other’s eyes. Stars sprinkled on a puff of wind and my ancestor’s whimsy (they watch us). I look at nothing except my own hands untying the knots of an old rope looped around a dying gum tree. We say nothing. Inside the words are screaming.