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Zoë Higgins

The Beach


We drove over folds of land
to reach this place – a tanned arm
of sand flung out across the coast. 
It smells of ghosts, which smell
like dry seedheads of grass.
The beds are not made up. We loll
sideways on a sunset blanket
laid on a double mattress. 
I go to boil the jug. 
When I come back you are beneath
the blanket, which falls in folds
like hills around your knees,
and I see again the distances in you,
a sleeping giant stretched for miles from the sea.


Zoë Higgins works in theatre and lives in Wellington.