Carrot walls peel around a corner

where the hotel slumps from the old highway.

Cars blur past, blind.

Farm utes crouch in the heat,

dogs panting in their cabs like forgotten sentries.

Inside, men nurse beers at a bar that will not break.

“Yeah, struth,” someone mutters – words brittle as glass.

A fan stirs piss-stained air through shards of sun.

The “Guest Only” door gapes, a mouth that will not speak.

I reach for you. Every door resists.

“He’s gone,” I tell the Queen in her frame,

her smile powdered with dust.

Pokies shriek like metal birds.