Ciggies and Bleach

                         My grandma and sister 
smoking ciggies and bleaching floors.
They're helping me move into the culdesac home 
I bought with my partner in dreaming. 
My grandma and sister's gossip echoes 
soft as emu feathers and love letters 
in the empty space, sweeping 
shadows from the skirting boards,
exiling ghosts from the kitchen cupboards. 
                         My grandma and sister 
doing an emu dance like we did as kids, dhinawan
teaching us to pick up the pieces of our past. 
Grandma swears every time she quits smoking
one of her kids dies. I let her get away
with it because it’s true and Mum's the only one left. 
We have our superstitions, shit that haunts us. 
My grandmother is of that generation
where clean house and holy mouth might stop ‘em
from taking your kids away.
And me? I subtract my age from that of my uncles'
when they died, even though I don't want to 
                         be a poet	prophet. It's better now 
except my sister says post-referendum  
the nephews and nieces are bullied at school, 
told they'll be sent away. We couldn't figure out where. 
But everything is ok because Grandma and sister 
are conducting cultural business 
with ciggies and bleach
as I help carry pot plants to the courtyard
with my partner in dreaming.