Critical Distance

In the time of public panic is personal hell,

and my private life lives     in the news reel.

My world is getting smaller and smaller—

as ecstatic feedback loops transform to vicious cycles.

I can either:  fixate on my grandpa hypothetically dying

or fall in love with someone I met online.

My phone notes say, ‘diasporic restoration’ and ‘geomagical determinism’.

Grandpa is 3kms away. The One For Me is 10kms.

In a faraway jungle, Grandpa says

he ran 14 miles.   I don’t understand how far that is

(too old, too foreign).

The One For Me steps in dogshit on the first date

and doesn’t text back. My phone notes say,

‘33 is your Jesus year? I’m trying to resurrect you?’

Now, the automated voice reads directions 

to Grandpa, who has lost his vision. An immigrant, he laughs

at her mispronunciations. (He left his own in Northcote, Thornbury and Preston).

The consequence of the apocalypse on these relationships is

the doom and longevity make me

extremely sentimental

and with outer chaos spurring on the inner again,

a 5km loop is an endless cycle.

Isobel D’Cruz Barnes (25) studies ethnomusicology and regularly falls asleep during past-life regressions