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.
