Ruby Macomber
Lupe
Uncle stained the fence black,
teeth stained yellow, breath stained tobacco.
He hid his cigarettes in the garden.
Under leaves, between bricks and weeds.
Left like breadcrumbs
and sometimes Lupe would find them.
Lupe, he’d say, I can’t stop now.
Lupe had never met a Fijian quite like him.
Listened to Tongan radio, real slow,
hugging him was like holding back a tsunami,
He was smoke, could ascend through any barricade.
He liked the way Lupe’s cat wouldn’t go away.
They were both stubborn, in that way.
Lupe, he’d laugh, just leave me be.
Five years later, Lupe did her first Samoan Siva at seventeen
in a purple puletasi, skin fair, nails green.
Hibiscus behind the left ear,
met a boy, slow-danced at the ball.
Hibiscus behind the right ear.
Uncle, you should’ve been there to see it all.
Uncle was never the first to leave,
until he did, rather abruptly.
Someone so high on life doesn’t belong six feet below.
His lungs, they said, were the first to go.
Lupe waited until the sun set.
She lay, spine on grass, as close to the ground as she could get,
and etched his name on a faded fence slat.
She cried in the dark
and slid a hibiscus lay where a cigarette should’ve been.
Ruby Macomber is a first-year student at the University of Auckland, studying a BAdvSci(Honours)/BA conjoint. She has had work published in Starling, Signals, Lineout and on the fridge at her family home.