‘The horizon tastes like summer fruits,’ says Tupuārangi, still glowing from the sun. I look back at that golden cloak hemming the sea, and say nothing. The wind catches us, and one by one we rise like fish pulled from the water. We breach into the night and wait. ‘Hiwa,’ comes the sweet voice of…
While I was a student, I lived in a pale grey cottage in Thorndon on a lane so narrow that if I was reading in my chair by the window, passersby could look over my shoulder and see that I had To the Lighthouse on my knee and that I was circling colours with my…
the fijian boy says he’ll bring kokoda, and marama’s tama, paua fritters. her daughter says she’ll bring panikeke, and her toko will bring ‘otai. the palagi boy says he’ll bring himself and everyone laughs her daughter says, but isn’t it meant to be a night repping all our cultures? chat, palagi people come from somewhere…
My feet dangle in the old waterhole. It looks the same. The dark patch in the corner, the black hole, we would call it. Mouth agape at anyone brave enough to swim its murky depths. The kahikatea still looms over me. Frayed remains of a rope hanging from a branch. We would swing from it,…
When they moved from America, New Zealand didn’t exist. None of the kids had heard of it (being five years pre-Fellowship of the Ring) and Emmy had to lug the globe from the activity corner to the front of her first grade class, spin it all the way round, and jab her finger so far…
It was bitterly cold this morning. I made sure we were rugged up for our morning walk. You had on your new purple beanie and scarf that Jess gave you for your birthday. We saw Emmie and the twins at the coffee cart. After a quick chat about the weather, they headed to the playground,…
Dad would stand the three of us on the bench in a row and dry us carefully, including between our toes. You and Curtis are naked in all my memories of the men’s changing room. The brown birthmark on your inner thigh, the scar on Curtis’s buttock from when he fell off the garage roof,…
Elliotte eyed the trees through the kitchen window, flecks of ash scoring the glass. The morning was long, not that they weren’t all long. And as she stared at the knotted forms of the trees, she switched her mind off to the lukewarm water that rushed out of the tap, hit her hands and filled…
I’m 27 and I’m tired. I have a pair of yellow crocs with fineliner drawings scrawled messily on top of them, I sometimes feel like I am living inside a blue curling wave with air bubbles just big enough to breathe inside, I miss waking up to the taste of another’s hair swiped around my…
The sky is black, red, and blue like a bruise. I press on it a little just to feel it ache. It spins above me, the world smearing into streaks of paint. I roll over just in time as the second wave of vomit rushes up to greet me. I hongi the sidewalk, pressing my…