The Body of a Rascal Kōtiro
Searching
My teeth fell into the sea
I’ll swim as deep as I can
one big breath in those little lungs
I will be the one to spot the taniwha
I’ll catch it and show all my cousins
None of us have seen it but we dream of it every night
So we sprint to the shore when the marama appears
to follow the whispers of tangaroa
We search for answers on the ocean floor
surrender to the sound
until it settles in our skin
Each one of us swallows water on the way back up
I float on the surface with purple lips
I can’t help but sink
and swim until it’s night time
until my hair turns into seaweed and
My smile is made of pearls
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The year everyone got GHD’s for Christmas
The first time was a ritual
My hair tangled in their forearms
Pulled in every direction and falling
To the will of each sparkling new wand
I am 10 years old and so hungry
For that practically Practical Magic
All my tuakana have mastered The Craft
so they sit cross legged in an open circle and
Welcome me to worship
An altar of broken combs
Rusty clothes irons and burnt fingertips
The room is foggy and steam rises
To dance with clouds of menthol cigarettes
Is this the mist that I'm supposed to be child of?
That mist you were talking about dad!
A hot pink Nokia plays Lauryn Hill on full volume
I place it in an empty cup to amplify the sound
They call me brainy but I only know
From all the time I’ve spent balancing
A glass between my ear and the door
Hoping to hear them swapping secrets
Since I could remember
My only birthday wish was to be a teenage girl
Luckily every new candle took me closer
And when their calloused and tender hands
Pinched at flushed cheeks and lifted my chin
My eyes settled there
In a perpetual upward gaze
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Giving and Taking and Giving Again
My heart is so full, big and beating
I feel her growing out of my chest
She stains my clothes red and pulses
at the slightest change in weather
aches to taste each rainfall
dreams of taking flight in the wind
She is agape and unafraid, inevitably
subject to sticky fingers saturated
in honey or venom or cum
Sticky fingers grabbing a fistful of whatever
might satiate their starving
She goes with them willingly
“Let me live and die!” She cries so
I kiss the pieces, torn and taken and
nod farewell with reckless faith
She knows too well
I’d crack open my own sternum
for the moments of blissful return
When the sun travels right into my unshielded chest
Light bursts through my body
beaming from my fingertips
and it feels like I am touching everything I see
-
I used to find you in every beautiful thing
Now all I see are pieces of my heart
Scattered about the universe
Like my very own treasure hunt