Adolfo Aranjuez is editor of Metro, subeditor of Screen Education, and a freelance writer, speaker and dancer. He has edited for Voiceworks and Melbourne Books, and been published in Right Now, The Lifted Brow, The Manila Review, Eureka Street and Peril, among others. Adolfo is one of the Melbourne Writers Festival’s 30 Under 30. http://www.adolfoaranjuez.com

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We conquer hearts like climbing
mountains, gamble cliffs

with no bearings. You bring
totems of past lives
inhabited. Homes broken

by tectonic tears. It creeps in
like moss on foliage,
weeks old. I stood in that hallway
for hours, wanted words
to spill from cracks in

your pauses. Tell me again
we fear leaving worlds we know

are safe. The shape of a gum
is unlike any other. Warning
heard through window, solo
magpie yarns of sadness.

I break watches ’cos I’m shit
at being patient. With you

space is finite but between us
distance is immense. We’re migrants
with shared skin. We’re bound
by secrets we keep—saying
our faces are the same

as they used to be
when we were kids building
hills by the shoreline.