everything

Kind of lovely to be creating melancholy inside the rain.

and again, sunday

I knew I
was going to
see you
before I actually
saw you

I don't know how I knew,
I just -
did.

(this has happened to me
before
but the subject
didn't believe me

"you're just drunk," he said
but I knew
that I knew
that I was going to meet him that night
and then:
I did
(and then, after a five-year hiatus
he turned up on a KFC commercial))

and then
I had the same
surge I had the night I didn't see you
and cut my hand bone-deep
on all of our
empty
wine glasses -

but it was probably also
two years'
first coffee coursing through me
and it being the week for yellow pills
and the fact that I was
rushing around
on only a croissant and a banana
gathering terrariums and
friends and
airports,
etcetera

and then suddenly
really happy
in the queue for 'Twelve Items or Fewer'
like, glad that I've arrived now
and thanks for helping me
get here
and thanks for
departing 

or something along those lines
except
much less
final

perhaps, more like:
revelling in my own stories
because they are mine
like little secrets pinned up
in the crevasses of my own self

and for all who've been written into them:
thanks for making an appearance.

from your bed, past mine and to work

There's a poem in this bleary-eyed

early morning walk 

through the city and its 

(my) satiated fatigue -

but I'm too busy listening

to Christina Aguilera to write it.

and you forced me to sit still and look you square in the eye

I want to write things 

(archive, rember)

but I don't know what the things are

the things in my head need decoding

just like I do

just like I want to 

but don't need to

with you. 

beginnings

I don't feel like I know a person until I feel like I have permission to touch them.

My school reports always said "diligent" and "conscientious".

I am repeatedly described by other people as "hard-working." When this happens, a fear creeps in where I wonder if perhaps I am not really actually good at anything, but just hardworking and persistent enough to pull things off ok.

Sometimes persistence is stupid, depleting, relentless; scant in its return and embarrassing in its refusal to compromise. Sometimes tenacity doesn't get you very far. 

What will happen when I'm just too tired to be persistent anymore? Too exhausted by myself and my life to keep being "hard-working"? Maybe I will cease to achieve anything, and instead, just be. I think that will actually be kind of nice. 

Karangahape

just so many 

beautiful

people in the world, I can't even 

cope - this Libran unravelling 

every time her magpie eye 

catches something glinting, and so many

different

kinds of beautiful, too

each needing to be known

needing to know how they all feel

when I press my fingertips into them

and query their pretty little

heads - 

what stories do they have to 

unfold to me? 

what new colours can my skin 

morph itself into, having

known them ? 

So much beauty in the world -

in us - it

overwhelms me. 

I used to have a really good memory for the details of past events in my life. 

Now, I find it quite difficult to recall specific memories - but what sticks vividly is how moments or experiences made me feel. 

Even though I am bored with Auckland now, having morphed a whole chakra here, I know I will still fall in love with it again when I return after having been away. It will always be home: not the place I grew up, but the place where I became the young adult I am and carved the foundations of my life as I wanted it to be.

Grey Lynn epiphanies

Almost everything I own was once owned by someone else.
I know 60 - 70% of the previous owners.

I love walking through the streets leading up to Ponsonby on Saturday and Sunday, and seeing all the discarded half-finished beer bottles left behind by weekend town go-ers.
This is completely contradictory to my attitude on littering.

All the streets I walk through remind me of past lovers.
The clubs and bars remind me of past friendships, or my own younger self.

I like the view of Pt. Chev - the city sprawl, or at night, the lights, and then the water - from the top of Cockburn road. I didn't notice this until I'd lived here several months, because I was always looking down at the footpath or noticing the trees that smell like weed and trying to figure out if it actually was pot or the trees (still not sure).

Locals will get angry if you pronounce it "Cock-burn".

My house is probably worth over a million dollars, despite the floor sinking and it being frikken cold and the fence falling over onto the neighbour's property.

I like it here.

dolls house

I was a little
drunk tonight, at work
and it was both
stupid and great

- like that time
Mike convinced me
to smoke a joint with him and his girlfriend
when I lived in
Grafton's shittest flat
(I only agreed
because he'd fucked me
four nights earlier

and I could still feel
his tall torso looming over me
and over
the blood-stained sheets -

and even as I write this poem
I see the habits
unravelling

my life's not really as badass
as it sometimes
sounds
on here

it's just that the badass bits
are sometimes the only bits
worth mentioning
sometimes they're the bits
that feel most alive
most raw and therefore
most honest

most like me.

reveling

beautiful things you said to me

that still reverberate in my head:

that I had a cute coming face

that I have nice areola

that I had cute tan lines

(still nice, despite "cute"

being

vaguely condescending)

and that time you said my name

which was strange, because

I'd forgotten we had 

names, we seemed too 

temporary for those

but still, nice

and no I won't 

apologize (to myself, mostly)

for writing about you, because -

as David and Lena have assured me -

that's just what happens 

when you fuck a writer.