,

back into the sea


i guess 
          what i want 
cause i don't know 
but also i do 
i want 
to lie in the sun and read my book forever 
i want 
to swim in rivers be licked by water and light 
cool and heat 
arch my back over hot rocks 
leave my imprint, shattered, speckled, splayed 
only to watch it gradually disappear 

everyone is tired of 
            sad poems 
tired of 
             questions, the same questions, phrased differently, 
             each time 
tired of your existential crisis, but crisis is the wrong word for a slow and gradual process that ebbs and flows and sometimes feels like a blessing. i know i am 
              blessed, that is, i am alive, i am 
one. the same one that 
turned from china to 

sea to 
dig for gold to 
tend to a market garden, 
inhale pesticides out the back of the fruit shop to 
go to university, museums, the opera, to 
forget 
to finally
 
             ask for more, to live 
in a big old (white) villa with 
(white) people and their 
(white) ways of doing things i am 
just that one 
person 
made of all of this and something 

else 
one person 
swimming backwards in time 
no more going forward 
we are only slowing down
I will turn this train of history around 
wind it around the wellington coastline 
and reverse it back 
into the sea. 

Featured photo courtesy of author.


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