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caroline shepherd

organ diary


heart as what my friends’ boyfriends all have going for them            so        nothing          
heart as a children’s play where                       it sucks but                   everyone’s trying


heart as a slice of fog     heart as a deserted beach       heart as a       never-ending rut


heart as the best version of me                                      which is to say


                                
                                                                                                                     all in my head

DISCARDED LINES


      i.               
tell me again how we were
                          bright red light and how
                          my       mother thought it was love while I
thought it was a head cold

      ii.             
      bored during class                    I draw up the veins in my wrist with a finger
             these roots keep me alive I think, hardly believing it
             I am lined all the         way                 through
            like        sunflowers       or                    an atlas

      iii.           
dream me inside a        whale’s mouth,                      flower seed or
             even     the dishwasher                        dream me anywhere
                          up
                                                                                          away

      iv.             
            my sister forgives me for getting sunblock on her bag                        and in
the winter, when I lose her umbrella                           she will forgive me then too.
and this,                        this is the best kind of luck          
                                                                                                         being born into this kind of love

      v.              
unable to stand ruining the poem with my dirty hands                      I do not
                          letting it rot away                      unwritten                     untouched               
god,     in my head the words are beautiful                                                                                  

                                                                                                          but they aren’t real there

fever dream


That summer was like cement, so thick and impossible to move through that even the dog was still. I had dreams where I marinated in a cold bath so often that I became a dead body – bloated and blue, my mother banging at the door demanding the bathroom.

When I told Daniel about these dreams he said I had heatstroke and I believed him, thinking it to be so medically serious that I called an ambulance. This, as one would imagine, worked out terribly for everyone involved. Our mother grounded Daniel for a week, which meant he wouldn’t talk to me for a week, which meant I melted in silence.

On days when I could hardly see straight, the heat all over me like water, I would lie on the ground shooing away the dog and the flies and imagine my body in faraway places. I was that awful age of old enough to be aware of things but not old enough to be doing them, and thought it certain I would never get any older.

You must understand, reduced to only the liquid parts of me, sweat swarming my body like ants, I thought doomsday had arrived. That the heat was sure to kill me. That that sun was for hours, for endless, for eating away at me.

But in the minute before the dark I could hardly believe how stupid I had been. How of course this would not kill me. This: the light fragmenting though the window, all dust particles in the air at a standstill. This: my body breathable in, the room soft again.

This: my hand outstretched, slivered by light, luminous.


Caroline Shepherd lives in Auckland but doesn’t plan to for long. She likes to write and sleep, and is rather good at the latter.