Hine-nui-te-Pō
Half caste daughters
of half castes
about to fall into quarters.
Cast out into cities
and universities
and forgotten about.
Their umbilical cords cut
and dumped in a sludge
of hospital waste.
The fake lobotomised smile
on their faces while bumping
a line off the back of
a phrenology textbook.
Shook at all the colours
you can find in a skull.
Taking boyfriends
like appointments with a doctor.
A finger in the mouth and
wanting to say
ah or amen
or ugh, men.
The migraines.
The light coming in.
The inherited trauma of
deeply existing in the space of
separated parents.
The long nights and the
sleep paralysis. Lying
on your back and pushing
the sky from your chest
with thighs that kill demigods.
The violence of divorce, the space
it leaves. The shock of the light
coming in. The distance.
The difference between
Heaven and the knowledge
that your first mother was hell
and chose to be.
Reconciling
what it means to be her daughter.
Getting her magic bible bashed
out of you. Running away to
cities and universities downloading
Tinder and getting assimilated in
white minimalist bedrooms.
Imported plants from Bunnings
overgrowing and infecting the whenua.
When it was my turn to come clean I said
I grew up tacky and hungry and dazzling.
I grew up neck deep in the dirt
but all I needed was a good pair of eyes
to see the stars first
which meant I got a lot wishes.
But I only had one thing to wish for.
All my fathers are in the sky anyway
I know I don't have to say it
But Mum you should have tied me
to the ground.
Instead I was given
to this city freely
Friends on benes.
Crown apologies.
Wannabe it girls at parties.
I wonder how it must feel
to be tethered somewhere
by a sense of home. To be buried
in your urupa and to find that when you die
you have been waiting
for yourself, this whole time, all along