I want to be a fruit tree
I want to grow something
joyful and bright and round as a plum that people could hold it in their hand and call it precious

I want to root into the earth
delivering freedom, arms open singing a cry that cracks at the sky to all gods listening
I want us to cry at the same time
because we're destined to cry for each other

I want to look down upon the pink flesh, familiar because it's my home, extended
my skin stretched out to be a fort for another, a shield and then a home
I want to be a shield and then a home

I want to give them a forest to hide in for solitude
or a labyrinth if they choose, and I'd understand why

I want to give them the mountain, the power to ascend
the hermits path unwinds for them as initiation
I want for us to always be connected
like the jewels that tremble inside caves awaiting discovery, how they owe their sunrise to the pressure of the night before.

I am not here
an old friend is waiting in my place
taking messages

I lie in bed and ask
where are you?
(I'm seeking myself)
all I hear back is
Not here.
Not here.

I try to remember
when I last felt like me
when my life felt mine
not foreign
I can remember tremendous pain
and since then
time has passed
without me in it

Separated for
hundreds of days and nights
where I am nowhere at all
I wonder, do I sometimes wake up in this world
this new life
and look around
before retreating again
retreat into the dark

I am floating
not here
not anywhere
I am not alive but I am
there is no root
there is no path back
there is no return at all
Only forward

My rebirth has taken 9 months.

The wind makes herself known to me
This grey Sunday
The day after love in February
She's breaking roots
My armour is cracking
My eyes drip
A cave system internal
Sits unexplored

I'm a stone fruit without any flesh
Raw and drained
I sit under the moon
She is milky and full
I see her face for the first time

I dream of being reborn in her moonlight
The soft grey shadows falling behind me
Shadows I will never see

I beg the stars to be my guardians
Each a messenger
A talisman
A treasure

Tonight I want to be delivered my fortune
To be full again like a plum

I'm a flower in concrete
My history deep in dust
Brightness is calling
The future is a tower to climb

Look deeply into my eyes
Get lost
Take note of how I feel
now that
My husband has died

Everything is grief
Everything is silent

I watch the light fall behind the trees again
Every day the light calls to me
Keep going
This can't be my death bed

I am made of salt
and bone

I am writing a book
By living

This is the ending
your vows foreshadowed
you sung out
'til our story is told'
and here I am
writing the final chapter

The storms stop today
coven
give me solace
as I burst open
like a dark spell

Your last embrace
burrowed deep into my shoulder
you were trying to find ground
I looked to the ceiling
begged it to crack open
to rain down dust upon us
celestial beings to steal me away from this
horrifying outcome

From this
opening

I need a waiata
I need a war cry
I need to summon a god
across the water

I lay awake
And listen to the storm of my life
The trees of the past are scraping against the house
And the wild wind feels painful
Tortured
Hurt
It's rained for thirty days

My writing mothers me the way nothing can
or ever has or ever will
Unless it's myself

I talk to the shadow of the lamp in my room
The shadow of the lamp lit
only by a little moonlight
The moonlight is small like me

My
grief
is
bewildering

I'm left with nothing but rain
and
snails to look out for on the front steps.

My hands filled with magic
I wave to a new world
I saw a Shaman
in the mirror
He is perching on the snowy mountains
and swimming through the ice cold rivers of Ōtautahi

We're Chanting
a duo in motion
my magician
my spirit
my mana
his cloak covers me in gold

The drums in my heart are deafening
we're bound in vines and ruby wood
air sails through the gaps
her whisper brings birds on the wind
To my feet

I am nature
I am all
Blood bonds
and stories
I am the clock counting down

Day two in the fog
the silence cracks at my skin,
My bruises are revealed
and grey light
falls over me.

I collapse into my breath
mine to take,
mine to hold,
mine to release,
Floating on the edge of the end

My childhood house
has been ruined in a cheap remodel

I spent
15 years in that bedroom
hiding and hoping
to disappear

It worked -
now there's no trace of us left at all

Me and that room, both
far too small
(for what I was to become)

That sunroom-turned-hideout
has all it's guts on display
the red wires sparkling
in the light of day

The space it once held (for me)
a cavern of power, open now
adds itself to the lounge
creating space for others
Am I one with this room?

The fire that kept my wall warm in winter,
has been ripped apart

Gone with it,
the hole in the back of the chimney
where I had a cupboard for keeping rocks
The same cupboard
That wouldn't close
Even when jammed with books
Jammed close, because,
I feared I was watched through the crack
by some mysterious force
maybe even the whole world
in on it all

Gone;
is the laundry that Dad used as a darkroom
(his own hideaway)
the red lamp: a signal burning bright
summoning us to join his cause
Or be left behind

Gone;
is the hall door that was slammed for effect
Slammed over and over in a war that still wages on
Gone;
is the cube shower with the folding door
a place to cry without any sign
Gone;
Is the multi coloured lupins I planted in '96
hoping they would overtake all of the other ground
saying that YES I was here
and YES I was real
In.the.dirt.

But Dad is happy the Apple tree remains.

you play guitar for me
write me melody
in the hallway of our rental

we have fish n chips for dinner
the day before payday
and gripe about those at work
who succeed at our expense

this is our modern love song

I fell in love with you
all over again
2 years after marriage
when you nursed me back to health

this is our modern love song

you build things like a man does
and we laugh in bed till we cry
after watching 10 hours of netflix

this is our modern love song

our anniversary was indian take out
and a fight
when we were going through a rough patch

but
this is our modern love song

everyone we know is in mental health crisis
and the city is overrun
with real estate agents

this is our modern love song

we vote together for a future
that might be good enough
for our child

this is our modern love song

we promise each other
this is the year
we'll get on top of all our debts
And go far away

this is our modern love song

when i come to you in tears
after someone has asked too much
you say come here
knowing they'll do it again

this is our modern love song

Why do I look to the birds
for a message from you?

The quiet portrait I took of you
in a Wellington hotel room
was stolen for the
front page news

Don't cry.

My therapist asks
'What do you miss about your friend?'
So I write this for you
And pretend you can hear me

Here I say -
I can't and I won't
eat another Japanese pancake
Without you
Without your smile

I can't and I won't
Watch Totoro
Or drink gin with a round icecube
Without you
Without your kindness

I can't and I won't
Listen to Bon Iver
Without your hurt
Without your hurt on my mind

This writing and mourning
has nothing
on the day you died

All our laughter
Adventures
Secret conversations
And promises
Are now gathering dust
in the 5 years it took
To realise
You are gone.

I ran to Kiyomizu-dera in the rain
To get good luck in love
I was lost in a storm
and left alone without a blessing

But your love
the love of painful nights in tears
held together

Love like wildfire
burning away all fear
Travelled
to find me
buried underneath three black stones

You plucked me out of concrete and rock
No storms are here
No storms can find me

Where are my guardians?
Have they all discussed amongst themselves
to leave me in this dark room
To find my own way out
Are you watching me?
Who's there?

There is a fly on your yellow roses
It won't move
The truth
sharpens me like a knife
gliding through glass rain
in a deep breath

Silence,
you kept a wave
under wraps
and away from shore

Behind the shroud
I wait
And watch with untold tolerance
My heart is under strain

The wind of death follows me
But I run, snaking through trees
Dodging, immortal

A marked child
Banking lives for debt

The horizon is topaz or citrine
Like an Omen hand delivered
If it's even there

The night is a whole year long
I'm an animal inside out

Surrounded by heavy columns
My mind cannot be overtaken
I have built
an internal citadel in the dark