there’s a half-eaten woolies mudcake
sitting on a small brick wall
halfway between my apartment and the tram stop
if it were me i’d be cold as hell
or angry, maybe, at being left behind
but no—it sits there beguilingly
in its silly little house
lilting a coy goodbye every time i go to work
when we first met, i laughed out loud
and now a week in we are silent, sombre neighbours
i try to write about it:
something something symbol of Australiana
something something beloved childhood cake
yadda yadda gentrified red-brick wall
in a neighbourhood that less and less people can afford
i show it my work and it laughs in my face
it tells me:
it pays to be a generalist
it pays to eat only half of what you need
when i was younger i made a game of breaking plastic cake holders
bending them until they could not keep up the lie any longer
for my efforts i got shrapnel in a hot, thick fist
and i kept all of the interesting shapes to myself
one night a storm fell like a wall on the city
and what can one cake do against a wall?
nothing, i suppose, but endure—
and it was unscarred come the morning
so i guess there’s something to be said
about the structural integrity of plastic cake holders
when they are not the target of fickle little hands
a week later, i went to work
and it had vanished without warning
i assume that
in the night
it had learned how to fend for itself