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.