Maia Armistead
Elegy
Every time I call I have to ask for your number, again and again,
As if we have never spoken at all. When I’m in my room I usually
Think about making money, and I don’t think about you. Not
Until I leave, walk past the bookshelf. Then the remembering is
Just a guilt. When I walk to the coffee machine I decide to give up
On greed. I decide to go hungry. I decide to be so lovely no one could
Think otherwise. But then I forget. I pick up the phone and call
The old house where you don’t live anymore. In my room you still live
There, you live in the curtains and the carpet. I listen to music for a while
And then lonely creeps back in and I remember, and I give up on greed.
I sit in the silence like a cold bath. I compose an elegy in my head for you,
But when I go to write it down I forget. The words go running out,
And when people ask how I am I just laugh and stare, and they say
There must be something wrong with me.
The truth is there are no words.
There are no words and if there are I don’t want to say them.
Maia Armistead is a law student living in Wellington. She has been published in Mayhem, Milly and The Spinoff, and was a finalist in the 2019 National Schools Poetry Competition.