I’ve been using stain remover to practice impermanence
White sheets, white shirt but I can still see the yellow even when it’s gone
I think the pain has passed and then I do something weird and it strikes again
The compass points back towards eating takeaways from Curry Heaven
in the Hospital courtyard
A day so warm my phone stopped working
I manu into memory and struggle to swim out of the rip
I’ve aged like a city
The rivers in the buried wetlands creased every inch of my skin
I don’t get ID’d anymore
Even my shadow looks different now
In this place we love to hate and hate to love
We are waiting for my face to flower again
Waiting for lips I can use for something other than complaining
I tell her I’m tired
and she asks if I have a reason
Ocean-bound plastic fills my lungs so I cannot give an honest answer
Instead I say the freshwater eels have been following me home
and it troubles me to send them on their way
I stand like a wilting pōhutukawa at the end of summer
I go deep while they go wide
Everything I shed carpets the ground red
The kārearea rips the tight lid of the sky open with its call
Strength like water that shapes stone
I ache for it
Dream of seedlings growing in my belly,
in the corners of my ribs
As someone who is both old and new
I am misery-soaked and beaten blue
Missing you is the longest thing I will ever do
But this is not a eulogy, not yet
The tūī lay the wero at my feet
Five calls out into the night
Can you give birth to a clean slate?
Could you let yourself believe it?
Can you run all night for it?
Could you try to love it?
Would you hold on tight, as a new world cracks open for you?’
