Yesterday Tonight Tomorrow
Yesterday a cold wind was blowing across the waters of the Welsh Harp reservoir, ruffling starved grasses and keening through the trees. I pretended it was gusting down from the high Rimutakas, shaking the easy waters of Wellington’s blue harbour bowl.
Tonight I’m floating in a homely sea, thickly-scented, easing my bones. I’m drinking rough red wine, and eating kiwi fruit. My knees incline together like twin peaks in Takimutu mountains, and my belly is as round as the boulders in Moeraki Bay.
The wine is good; but it doesn’t bring you nearer. Will you toast me tonight in sparkling Auckland wine?
The kiwi fruits are small and green, needing the sun to plump them up to gold. The kiwi fruits grew once in your far country; but they do not bring you nearer.
You send me postcards from Waitangi and Rotorua. There are snapshot images filed inside my brain. I liked you round and kindly in your faded red-silk dressing-gown. I liked you around, and kindly in my bed. I liked you. You rounded me with kindness.
When I move, rearing up, I shake the stale cold water, and it rolls down the edges of the bath like Morokopa falls. Tomorrow you‘ll worry, as you pace out Paekakariki, that I’m in love with you. I’m not. I’m in love with the idea of being in love with you.
Yesterday, walking back through a bitter and dusty wind, I wanted greenstone tiki to hang upon my ears. My face is being carved roughly out as if by a scorned tohunga. There are lines on my forehead and under my eyes as detailed as moko. I didn’t choose this pattern to put upon my face. I want greenstone tiki to hang upon my ears. I want the wind to growl ‘darling’ and shake me, sudden and fierce.
Tonight I am suspended in a hot salt-thickened bath. I count the childbirth scars upon my belly, check again the stretch-marks that meander across my white, withdrawn body. The door is shut. I am my own mother now, badly scared, wanting to climb back inside where water first lulled me. I am my own baby and I cannot hush the crying. I want to put myself inside the strong guard of your pa. I am my own baby and I cannot hush the crying. The wind must growl. ‘Darling’. Sudden and fierce.
I turn on the tap. Hot water erupts from ancient plumbing: gushes, swirls. Heat surrounds me. The door is shut. Heat surrounds me, and images are lost under white clouds. Lost and clinging. Hot water gushes, erupts. When I was young, I panted for the dark stranger. I didn’t see you, hiding in books, playing out your simple dramas on a bare and empty stage.
I didn’t see you but I can remember dark curling hair and the sweetness of your red and curving mouth. I didn’t see you, but I can remember. Smiling eyes and that you listened.
Tomorrow you’ll worry that I’m in love with you. I’m not. I’m in love with the idea that I’ve fallen in like with you. When I was young I desired only the dark stranger. You hid in books, played out new dramas on a crowded stage. I didn’t see you until you returned as the dark and smiling stranger.
By then I’d grown into a different age.
Jenny Argante
posted by Jenny Argante @ 12:43 PM
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