ELISE SADLIER
MY SISTER, THE Patupaiarehe
My sister makes a point of doing things faster than I can. She scales the pines by our house with ease. As I trail behind her my hands start to scratch and my side aches. Nestled at the fork of a branch she smiles down at me. Her teeth gleam, sharp as obsidian. She angles her foot just above my fingers, pointing her toes; waiting to crush. She laughs as though a kēhua moves through her. I cling to the trunk and refuse to climb any higher.
I am convinced that my sister is a patupaiarehe.
That night I dream of dark forests with midnight blue trees and magma eyes glowering from the shadows.
I watch her closely, noticing how she avoids the sunlight and picks at her dinner. I wait for her to recoil at the smell of cooked meat but she hides it too well. Later, my mother finds squished peas underneath my chair. I insist they aren’t mine, that I always eat my peas.
My sister’s eyes burn from behind a crack in the door.
She won’t believe you. She’s under my spell.
With a bruised behind I toss and turn through the night chanting,
You do not fool me, you do not fool me, you do not fool me.
*
I was not made to work
I was made to frolic through fields and gather fruit and make kawakawa tea and lounge by a stream
I was made to spend my life peering through waters dyed pink and laced with sunsets
I was not made to work – my body grates against it
I was not made to work under the hum of blue light
I was not made to pretend that time doesn’t exist with a post-it
I was made to prepare kai and feed anybody who says they’re hungry
I was made to pull kinas from the rocks and clean my cuticles with their spines
Stir pipis from their beds with my toes
I was made to crack open rotted logs and loll about with huhu grubs in swarms of flour
I was made to tickle my toes with moa feathers
Massage myself with kōkōwai
I was made to be a feast laid out for all that hums
I was made with wide hips to cling to at night and warmth to burn off me
Full-bellied / fingers stained / lips tacky with juice
*
Bronze Pania has perky titties
She casts her eyes out to the unswimmable shore
rocks compound on angry waves
Pania becomes foam
becomes sea glass
becomes the current and its subtle warmth
She becomes the breath of her lover as it gasps for the surface
She becomes the salt in his vomit and
the crabs on the ocean floor
She rages against the pebbles on the shore
knowing one day they will cede sovereignty to her again
and all will be lost to the sea
as it should be
*
Her and her cousins are of the earth
One day, the volatile ground split open as a wound
heaving deep sighs
as they crawled out from the roots
Hunter / Gatherer / Forager
With Coke cans concaved at the centre
they watch as the bark of the trees flexes
flipping through copies of Rainbow Magic
Hyena laughing till their bellies ache
The gasps echoing all around
They make homebrew faerie liquor from rainwater / silver fern / ground dandelions / quartz fished out of the pond /
I dare you to drink it I dare you to actually drink it – I dare you – You’re such a baby if you don’t drink it – No don’t cry – Look – You don’t have to drink it – Okay – Shush – Stop crying before Mum hears –
*
I am my sister’s keeper
and she is mine
Elise Sadlier is a part-time artist and writer, full-time tangiweto.