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Pippi Jean

Maia, in July, on the steps between the flats


stopping to pick a flower in the green grace of it,
too good for your own good, in the softening swell
of the day. the horizon lightens over the houses
and their red-brick rooftops, lifts the hills
over the harbour, comes to rest flickering
on a passing plane. there are seashells
strung on twine in a tree to greet us,
sand clinging grit on our feet. everywhere
we went today we smelled the sea.
the cold is getting colder, winter sun
fraying silver on our summer dresses,
slowing wind to a freeze. everyone
hurries inside, out of the evening. for a minute
you wait, to pick a flower
at the end of the day.

Postcard to Alana


The difference between you and me is you are willing
to let your heart take a battering because your heart is
a suit of armour in the tomb under Vergina projecting
its winged glittering across the museum inviting all the
visiting children to veer closer each hand out to either
side grabbing at glass cases steering blind then to peer
between the letters in a brochure and misinterpret you
as an artefact lost for a thousand million years declare
you they’ve found you although you were dug up right
where you were meant to lie. The difference is you can
die believing in something. I am one of those children
crouched in a corner with my heart, burying.


Pippi Jean is nineteen and studying Communications in Wellington. She has been described as ‘speedy’, ‘a small bird’, and ‘not very situationally aware’.