The Girl who Believed in Fairies

Image credit: Grace

I was never meant to survive this long.  

Here I am op-shopping for a lawn edger and creating plans  

That once I would never

Thought of making.  

The unravelling is so sewn into this life

I give you permission to bail on me  

every time you give slight notions that you might  

want an out.  

Don’t worry

I get it  

I bailed on me too.  

I wipe a drippy nose

And rub puffy eyelids as I

Cry into 

Late hours of the night 

Mourning a life that was... 

Full of wonder 

Magic and 

Adventure.  

Five years old

As I stared out the window of the jeep

Headed to the Bay of Islands

Where the water glows; and 

Native bushes are more than alive

A time when I believed

 In magic and happiness.

Stories of magic and pirates

Were whispered into my ear 

My uncle showing me where to find fairies 

In the Kerikeri garden

My grandmothers’ religious hands grasping for mine

 Out of fear that my mind 

May indeed run away with the fairies. 

I made concoctions of flower petals, weeds and wildflowers. 

Tinctures, syrups and herbal remedies. 

Not knowing I didn’t believe 

In the doctor’s medicines. 

At nine, I learnt to believe in magic

Was also to experience inevitable darkness,

And evil  

Death of hope and wonder. 

Where whimsy and magic once fluttered  

crept self-sabotage,  

injurious and impulsive gremlins 

that were meant to kill me. 

Sometimes I find myself standing in doorways,  

Leaning on the frame 

Not knowing how to leave or stay 

Or where to go to

I haunt my own home.  

It is funnier than that.  

Or I want it to be funnier than that. 

It’s just that I was never meant to survive this long.  

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