Ohiro Road, Brooklyn

The departure was as awkward as how it started. Moving a flaccid mattress between Wellington flats. One hundred and eleven steps down, fifty-seven up. Then fifty-seven down and one hundred and eleven up, back to the van to get more stuff: your Penguin book collection, Vice magazines, SodaStream, coffee machine, rare and dear-to-you vinyl (Aztec Camera, High Land, Hard Rain; the Breakaways), your Nana’s Arabia Finnish glass bowls. Futon mattresses are the worst to move. So bendy and bulky, with nowhere to get a hand hold. At the hundred and eleventh step we pause—take a breath. Lean against the warp and weft of cotton-wool-latex. Mutter faaaaaaark at the heft, while Zealandia’s kererū laugh.

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Writer and teacher Annabel Wilson lives in Ōhinehou Lyttelton. Her poetry has been published and performed in Aotearoa and overseas. Annabel’s first book, Aspiring Daybook, won the NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival Best Fiction Award in 2018 and was longlisted for the Ockhams in 2019. She’s recently completed a PhD in creative writing from Massey University in which she investigated hybrid forms of writing. annabelwilson.net / annabelwilson.substack.com