Free licks, the sign read.
Of ice cream? My mind questioned.
Summer was not here.  

The sign read free licks of ice cream,
Summer was not here?
My mind questioned.

A violin player
In the street
Playing for food
My ice cream melts
Into the cracks
To feed the ants
That conspire below

I don't know how long I can pretend that I'm not rotting from the inside out.

I use a giant silver spoon to carve it out, pretend its ice cream, pretend its happiness, pretend its temporary. Every time I scoop, I'm closer to the bottom of the pint; but what's there at the bottom?

I look fine in your periphery, so what's there to worry?

I'm not bad at pretending, I'm just bad at being un-ugly.

everything is so sweet
like cotton candy sold in the night market
just like vanilla ice cream that melted on the tongue
tonight the sky was bombarded with fireworks
rainbow colors are scattered everywhere
stars have friends
they celebrate

there is still time
for eating an ice cream
feeding flowers
seeing rainbow
and loving..

so i read stories and poems
and in most of them the
writer equates love
with touch
and i mean thats fine but here i am
an awkward ace person
i dont need to be caressed
but if you would get
me superman ice cream
and watch the half blood prince
with me and pass me tissues
when dumbledore dies
and ask if you can hold my hand
that would be neat

Beach shell varnished, kerosene,
A crack in coastal stain glass window, like a hair across the face
Disrupting the vast porcelain
“you’ve got a hair on your face, let me just”
and then it takes the lipstick with it,
a line printed like a paper cut,
“where’s the razor? Where did you put it?”
I put it in the bin and try and not seem too desperate.
We bundle into a car
Like some odd kind of sleepover.
A plaque on the wall saying the current prime minister opened it back in the day.
The old building is cracking like sedimentary rock in reverse.
The lemon lime and bitters clink in the bag and
I can almost convince myself it’s a summers day packing to go
Off to the beach, running down
With a picnic blanket
Sand in shoes
Tinkling down like an egg timer.
Seals, odd floppy babies about to bark,
The tussock a balding old man, spattered across the dunes
“let’s get icecream”
“let’s get fish and chips”
“let’s get out and stop take a photo”
the wind whipping your hair at your face
flicking icream off the cone onto your face,
why is it all so messy?
Let’s got to kākanui, let’s go to moeraki
Let’s stop to get a coffee.
You sure it’s safe to drive, this tired?
Let’s stop and have a nap.

You good to go?
Yeah
You sure?
Yup