loretta riach
correspondence
1.
o familiar friend, I have been hoping to talk to you for a long while now
walk with me a short way here– walk along the beach with me
It is the middle-most day of the winter the seagulls follow us, impatient
and in spite of the dark we find ourselves
lingering– talking slower than usual, the wind keeps the words
from spilling over
I was afraid that I would run out of things to say but there’s always more
You looked ready to run half the time but still, you stuck around and showed me
a thing or two– a new fern unfurling, a bruise in fading lavender,
I said that must have hurt a bit and you said yeah, a little bit
We make our way back
and saying goodbye stings in that familiar way– but only for a little bit
2.
This week began with a storm but now it’s Thursday and
I worry that I will have to keep leaning into this wind forever
o sweet heart of my mid-to-late thirties I hope you are keeping warm
I hope you are holding a hot blushing secret up to your cheek, and it makes you go pink
I hope we found each other in a simple way,
the path cleared, the love dark and thick as molasses
I’m going to build you a tiny house with my love alone,
no need for carpentry,
the blue smoke from the chimney and the spiders in the corners and the wet bark–
I worry I will lose sight of it and wind up on a Dunedin beach all alone
trying to spell your name out of driftwood and beer cans
when I close my eyes the woodsmoke fills me up,
and even though there’s still thunder rolling over us from the west I think
I will still be able to hear you coming my way
3.
In the future I install a pond in our front garden
our babies play in it
Look how their dimpled knees rest in the shallows
I will think about you all the time and so it itches like a prophecy in pale yellow,
weak August sunlight through those synthetic lace curtains
At the moment we have never met so I am trying hard to picture your face
It’s like trying to describe how small cells are
or, if I were to draw a road map of the major state highways from memory
I’d follow my hesitant paths and end up finding you anyway– there you are,
In our front garden
learning to just sit under a mist of plastic-warm hose water
And your babies gum-smile up at you
and you do not have to think about much else
pyroclastic flow
hold my hand! run through the hallways of my heart! a madcap sprint! quick! hold me close!
take me in! I am taking you in! like a wooden sailboat axed in the hull! the river is pouring in!
you are the river! bail me out!
you are the river! o baby! you are the muddy banks and the eels and the stones and the broken bottles!
you, embedded in me! me, afloat in the current! take me all the way out to the ocean!
dance with me! under the moon! under the fluorescent moons of the chemist warehouse! I spin you around!
I swallow you like cheap vitamins!
help! I am a volcano! I fling rocks everywhere! I am feeling so much! you look me dead in the eyes! I erupt!
we both have bodies! we are two bodies colliding! in warmth! in gasping! in tandem!
our bodies wash into each other! we are the tide! the tide! hold me tight!
Loretta Riach is twenty-one, lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and is an artist and a student. They mostly write poems about rocks and voted pekapeka-tou-roa for Bird of the Year.