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.
 
 
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