Rite of Passage

you thought age would make you impervious
to everything, that dimmer light
would give you an alluring profile,
or heartache would help you
write better poems.

not gifted in metaphor, I thought
you looked like a postcard from the side:
something inviting but impersonal
about that tucked-in chin,
the high sweep of your cheekbones

like a proud-winged bird. I remember you
standing in my kitchen, taller
and freckled from summers abroad.
nothing felt temporary
but everyone was on the move.

your new house was next to God’s,
a church that hosted seniors on Sundays,
their cries of Bingo! striking the dark like coins.
you called me after curfew to tell me this.
when was it that we came untethered?

now you are a whole bruised history
wrapped in a girl, and I am
running behind your train,
arms raised like an augur, offering
my handkerchief to the wind.

commend me to the skies
out the other end of childhood:
that place we all go to never come
back, only to find ourselves
circling familiar tracks.

---

Anuja Mitra lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her poetry has been published in places like Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, Landfall, The Deadlands, Turbine | Kapohau, Unbroken, and Haven Speculative. She probably thinks about writing more than she does it.