Dani Netherclift
Lifelines/deep white
These closed-in days
swim ladders
to nowhere
what is the difference
between your world and
this—
waiting for the flood
for the dead
to enfold & remember
and make their claims on living
waiting is time that opens
and closes
empties & fills again each hour
with absence
and possibility
an underwater
      wondering
the future throws back
ribbons like roadkill
entrails signifying
nothing known
they coil & unfurl
            coil & unfurl
an umbilical lifeline
to deep white.
Dani Netherclift has been recently published in Meanjin, Cordite Literary Review and Mascara Literary Review. She is the winner of 2020 The Queenscliffe Literary Festival's Microfiction Competition.
previous page     contents     next page
Lifelines/deep white
These closed-in days
swim ladders
to nowhere
what is the difference
between your world and
this—
waiting for the flood
for the dead
to enfold & remember
and make their claims on living
waiting is time that opens
and closes
empties & fills again each hour
with absence
and possibility
an underwater
      wondering
the future throws back
ribbons like roadkill
entrails signifying
nothing known
they coil & unfurl
            coil & unfurl
an umbilical lifeline
to deep white.
Dani Netherclift has been recently published in Meanjin, Cordite Literary Review and Mascara Literary Review. She is the winner of 2020 The Queenscliffe Literary Festival's Microfiction Competition.