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# Slow Sundays call for poetry
- URL: https://www.bibliomaniac.com.au/slow-sundays-call-for-poetry/
- Published: 2026-03-08T23:16:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-14T08:31:48.000Z
- Author: Carly-Jay Metcalfe

### A poem I wrote for Cam, who you met on my last post 🌈

**Dilectus**

And so, it is weeks now.  
Not a year, not months; the anticipation of chemotherapy expired.  
Just the work of grief, the clipping of loose ends,  
the tucking under of seams, weaving   
them in until the blanket is threadbare, ready  
for when your nephews have children of their own.

There is no fairness in this - we knew it from the outset.  
And you with your red lipstick asking, ‘Have I done enough?’  
You did it all by waking up as I waited  
in stillness under a blanket of cicadas,  
my head thicker with memory than I bargained for,  
waiting for rivers of thought to calm.

I’m supposed to be good at this -   
the sick, the dying, the grief;  
the scaffold of life being torn down.  
Yet I feel vastly underqualified, heaving   
with it all, splitting open like a banksia pod.

Just now, a rainbow lorikeet lands in the Chinese elm  
and it is as though you are here but already gone.  
The bird hangs from a branch, bark tight with lichen.  
It rebalances, drops down to the bird bath and sips delicately,  
it’s teal head glinting in the autumn sun.

I catch the wind on my tongue, see the hibiscus blooming.  
I memorise you, singing you home with a hymn to all things lost.

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WxH0!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F644636ba-ceab-427d-b14c-41ea4207f5fa_1170x1153.heic)

[Camille: a human rainbow](https://carlyjaymetcalfe.substack.com/p/dear-life-dont-stalk-your-loved-ones) 🌈

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g-XF!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F11e636f3-fbc5-4638-9ca5-e48027cf44f4_2056x1668.jpeg)

Will you look at her, beautiful and brave as fuck with her main man, Wally.