The sky is ashen pink from the bushfires south, lightning strikes, thunder growls, the fruit-bats fly out. I think of the preacher’s mouth, telling us in the End Times the…

We will all make our way down that corridor into white light where time stands still, death our guide. If you harbour any doubt your body won’t fall to ash—dispel it. Your mortal body will surely turn and pale.

They say eventually we’re all drawn back to the place of our birth. We must follow the bloodline. It leads to the gold centre of the heart.

Incarnation, when your soul takes flight, high over the cosmic sky, blue, black, sometimes indigo, the heavens hold you until you enter the womb.

If there were but a thing called time, I’d stretch it out like a long rope; I’d thread it through all my past lives, watch all my human drama on display, me, me, in many different forms.

I lie in bed, unwell, unable to move my body or head. Paralysed, dependent, like a newborn, or the very old. My husband hovers. I feel sorry for him; a wife that’s become a sack of wheat.

How I came to suffering blindly, choking, lungs filled with dirt—red hair, red dress, and shoes, skin the colour of thick cream, she stamps her tiny feet up on the mound that will be my grave, and the earth shudders.

What if I told you you didn’t truly love me, but her. The one who visits when you sleep, wrapping you in her blue arms, telling you she is the anima; the soulstar lover—the one whose light mirrors yours without reflection.

Love—the centrepiece, the missing piece of our life puzzle; bright, beautiful star, in pieces …

If fire is my destiny, and we’re to dance for life, how do I grasp the passion end of the straw, and leave pain hanging?

In the tradition of women in my heritage, I did all I could to hide—Red hair dyed black, green eyes dulled, mouth pursed, cheeks pinched, balled fists turning to bruise.

Stretch your face towards the wind, and feel it making love to your face, lips, cheeks, chin—