Norman Street

The summer air is honeyed and melancholic

                but I still wear spring’s perfume; lavender oil in bathwater,

bloated lemons on the riverbed

                 it is always Sunday

                                             here, on this street

The evening’s sails bloom and furl,

              the river tangles itself in the tree-line,

the street is haunted by corpse brides and one              real wife —

Inside, my mother stands with bare feet on                  wooden floors

making stewed plums, heaping the slippery bruises

                over beds of cream

I adore her so much             that I am supernatural;                  

             I can feel everything she does

Her dreams on this street are shallow rock pools:

she meets a ghost on the mountain,       they swim

      in the dawn’s golden yolk;

               in another she is a black cat and        her green eyes

                                                                                see through time 

Watching her skin glow coral-pink,               fingers spinning time

                                                                                              into fairy gold,

                    knees flushed against the riverbed of           a sweeter month,

it is difficult to remember that it is her first time                in this world, too

Later, when the sky’s golden thread is sewn

        in between the houses

                                           and dusk creeps in through an unlocked door

my mother and I, fevered and wriggly,

                                            will whisper our secrets to the bedroom wall

and I tell her about the time

               I saw the world for what it is: a maze

with an unspooling thread I was supposed to pull taut

            but would let                    

                                                                                 slip

She is snow, she is Sunday, she is the entire street        when she whispers

tie your thread to me                                                 

I hold these words in my cheeks like

                                                     the plum-stones that we buried in the garden

pushing my tongue against the soft flesh

                                            to bury them             deep, deep               deeper still

A Thought from December

We have collapsed into this game of hide and seek for

half a decade.

How strange it is, to discover that the epilogue is soft and summered,

your name sitting on my tongue like          light on wooden floors.

And the thought is true and unspoken  

                                                             that I see tiny endings everywhere —

It fell into January, and            no one asked if I was ready,

     magnolia’s satin tongues will fall in June and the river will flood in July,

I never knew how to watch the seasons change, but

this might be endless —

You, stopping the car to wake me up,

and I, half-awake and shimmered in light,

leaving clues behind on the windowsill of the dream

                                                                                  to find my way back.

Aruna Joy Bhakta (she/her) grew up in Taranaki, and now lives and works in Wellington. She graduated from Te Herenga Waka in 2022 with an Honours Degree in Classical Studies. Her previous work can be found in Starling.