Alex Skovron
Bondi
i.m. Graeme Thorne
Almost the week the boy
was taken away, we moved in—
Edward Street was on the news,
police came and went.
He had been cajoled into a car
outside a corner grocery
just down the street. Strange
to think now of that
Four Square Store, and of him
hurrying towards it
to his fate—the very shop that
I, leaping off the bus
in years to come, would visit
for an after-school licorice stick
or Nestlé’s sixpenny-thin
chocolate tile (an aircraft card
inside each); the shop where
I, descending Wellington Street
in years to come, would turn
left into O’Brien Street,
walk another block, and there
by the rickety fence await
the School Special to Randwick,
another unspecial day,
my schoolbag grounded
and safe between my shoes.
Previously published The Intimacy of Strangers
(North Shore Poetry Project, 2018).
image: Jonathon Borba