Emma Philips
WHAT ARE STUPID FUCKING BOYS TO THE ENTIRETY OF THE COSMOS!!!
‘What are men to rocks and mountains?’ – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I’m sick of writing love poems / lovesick head full of him / him made of atoms and tiny things and the universe IS FUCKING INFINITE / what right does he have to be the one / when there are billions and billions of stars??? / sick of reading romances / Lizzy should have told Darcy what she thought of him the first night they met / gone to class war against him / run away and become a poet or an artist or anything but A FUCKING WIFE / doesn’t mean I don’t swoon when they get together / I try to be a feminist / but I’m so FUCKING SCARED TO WALK HOME IN THE DARK / I rewrite a text eight times to ask him to meet me there / walk me back home / because I need a man not to get kidnapped BY A FUCKING MAN / and now I’m all overwhelming feminist rage / and I’m told I’ll put him off because I’m too much / too FUCKING MUCH IN A UNIVERSE WITH NO EDGE / that expands on and on forever / and I’m wrong for wanting more / more than white picket fences and kids and A FUCKING NUCLEAR FAMILY / as if I have to orbit him endlessly / an electron that can’t gain enough energy to FUCK RIGHT OFF OUT OF THE VALENCE SHELL / the moon only reflecting the light of the sun / I’m sick of inevitable happily ever afters and weddings / to have / to hold / til death do us part / well it’s a long FUCKING TIME TIL THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE / doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes daydream of spending all that time with him / dancing in the vacuum of space as entropy increases / WHY CAN’T LOVING THE COSMOS BE ENOUGH???!!!
One Morning at the Lights on Symonds Street
I thought I smelled fresh-cut grass the other day / green smell after the first mow of hay in the summer / sitting inside with all the doors open at night / warm air and mosquitos on my skin / tractors whirring away down the dusty gravel road / at the intersection of Symonds Street and Wellesley Street there is nothing green / except the lights unleashing headphoned students / bent under the weight of backpacks and assignments they should have done last night
I was taken back for a second / as if on the other side of a zebra crossing I could find my old world / as if one can actually follow a road back / to another time and place / where the ground gives way slightly under my feet / no unforgiving concrete / I sit in the armchair at home / it is just a house now / home slipped out of my pocket on State Highway 1 / flew out the window across the dome valley / vanished into the K Road night / leaves already dead and orange scatter across the street
I would leave gumboot prints in the mud / the land knew I was there / untrackable I traverse the city / the permanence of concrete and iron and glass against the drifting sky / against me / and the smell is gone and I am here / then I am gone / gone back / to sit awkwardly in a house holding a cup of weak coffee / wishing for the light polluted view of Grafton Bridge at night / as much as I long for empty green horizons / I can’t go back home / it is not just a space but a time / autumn leaves on dark grey concrete / I can only move chronologically / already drifting away across the grey city
After The Epilogue
Watch, the camera zooms out to a wide shot, the car disappearing down the highway into the bright sunset, music fading, and that’s the end of the story, everyone leaves the cinema, put the book on a shelf til it’s eventually demoted to the second-hand store, forget the plot points just remember it’s the one where she grows up and gets the guy
Then you breathe again
The playlist ticks over and another song comes on, and don’t you know you can be whoever you want when no one’s watching, there’s no neat little hero’s journey arc you need to follow anymore, scream to the thrum of the car engine, shrug off all the archetypes and throw consistent characterisation to the wind, the highway rolls on forever and that’s a long time to live in the epilogue
Pull over only to break up with happily ever after on the phone, then keep driving
Emma Philips spends too much time writing poetry in maths lectures. In 2023, she was commended in the National Flash Fiction Day Youth Competition, placed second in the Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook Student Poetry Competition year 13 division and won the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition Secondary Schools category. She has been published in Starling, The Quick Brown Dog Journal and other New Zealand publications online and in print.