yellow

here I ache for a summer
that probably never happened.
think of L-plates left on the car
for years too long and the day
I sat by a creek bed and wished
for my life to be bigger. at the
kitchen table I described to you
the plot of a danish movie, but I
don’t think you listened. remember
days trying on fat jewelled rings
and wondering if I would’ve been
a good 50s housewife. you told
me once that good memories don’t
exist here, but in this place I still
think of summer, of the sun sitting
in the sky like a fat egg yolk, and
the feeling I could reach up and
burst it with the fork of my finger.

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Hannah Marshall is a writer from Wellington. She was the Otago Regional Poetry Slam champion in 2021. You can find her work in Salient and Starling.
Twitter: @HannahMarsh__